Education, good values key to shaping future leaders, good governance - Dr Mahathir

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said concerted efforts should also be taken to implant children with good values through the education from the very beginning.

“I think, it all begins with our education. So if we start off teaching our children good values, when they grow up they will know how to manage themselves and how to manage whatever position they might be in, in their own country.

“It is a long process, (but) there is no short cut (to it),” he said at inaugural Perdana Dialogue 2021 held virtually, from Kuala Lumpur, Tuesday.

Themed ‘System of Governance’, the forum was organised by the Kuala Lumpur Summit, a focus platform to promote good governance, as well as to foster multi-national effective and sustainable development programmes.

He added that for the Muslims, the al-Quran have stressed extensively on the importance of good values and making them the way of life.

Dr Mahathir, who is also the Kuala Lumpur Summit’s chairman, said education with a good value system also plays an important role in shaping a person’s thinking and action. Citing wars, Dr Mahathir said the West is always facing wars as they spent billions of dollar to build and invent new weapons.

“This is their view of things, that war is legitimate, war is a way of solving things. I hope that in order to have good governance, we must implant in the mind of children and in schools, and university, that war is a crime,” he added.

The forum was also participated by several leaders from the Muslim world, namely KL Summit secretary-general Dr Abd El-Razzak Makri, former deputy prime minister of Turkey Dr Emrullah Ishler, former Tunisian foreign minister Dr Rafik Abdel Salam, and former Egyptian planning and international cooperation minister Dr Amr Darraq