Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is in New York for five days to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

And it's clear his schedule is packed — on Wednesday, Sep. 26, his first day there, he was a panelist at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum, at a session moderated by journalist Fareed Zakaria.

Anwar as Prime Minister

According to a New Straits Times (NST) report of his remarks, Mahathir said,

"I made a promise that I would not stay long as Prime Minister. Maybe two years, maybe more, maybe less."

And will Anwar be the next Prime Minister?

"That is my promise."

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Mahathir explained that although Malaysians wanted a new Prime Minister after the watershed General Election 14 in May, Anwar was in jail at that time. So Malaysians, he reportedly said, had "no choice".

Trump and consistency

According to NST, when asked what Trump needed to do in relation to its policy on Asia, Mahathir called for consistency from Trump:

“Be consistent. Be consistent. If you want to fight us say you want to fight us. If you don’t want to fight us and you want to be friends say so and be friends.”

In another report on the session by TODAY, Mahathir said that Trump "changes his views even in a manner of hours" and that dealing with inconsistent people was "a big problem".

He also reportedly added that in the current U.S.-China trade tensions, China is likely to outlast the U.S..

Reactions

Here are the top comments from the NST article about Mahathir's promise:

And in response to his comments about Trump and consistency, here are some reactions to TODAY's article:

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Top image from Mahathir's Facebook page