Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Read online

  Malaysia's Constitution, however, gives the hereditary rulers of the country's nine Malay states, meeting as the Conference of Rulers, the power to remove the king by a majority vote. A compelling case could be made that Dr. Mahathir was under a strong moral obligation to inform the Conference of Rulers, with whom he met regularly, that the sultan they elected for a five-year term as head of state, had taken the life of an innocent man. Indeed, a small group of Malaysian lawyers made an unpublicized private attempt to persuade the rulers to remove the king, not over the killing but because of his role in the action against Salleh Abas. According to one of the lawyers involved in the initiative, four rulers agreed but a fifth, needed for a majority, backed out at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur.[61]

  When he learned of the caddy's death, Dr. Mahathir informed the Cabinet. He mentioned it "in his notes and not for discussion, just to say, 'look, we have to handle this carefully. Let me handle it'".[62] The news was never published in Malaysia, though word circulated in elite circles and was alluded to obliquely. For instance, Tunku Abdul Rahman told a conference on the Constitution he was "concerned" that the king and rulers "are free to commit crime", and he suggested that a special court be established to try them "in order to protect the fundamental rights" of all Malaysians.[63]

  Any publicity about the caddy's death probably would have made the king's continued occupation of the throne, until his term expired in 1989, untenable. By remaining silent, Dr. Mahathir placed the king under a heavy personal obligation, a situation the prime minister deftly exploited when it involved politicians and officials indebted to him, or vulnerable in some other way. And, indeed, the king showed early signs of gratitude: Although he was supposed to be above politics, he had ignored constitutional propriety and endorsed Dr. Mahathir's Team A the previous year. Karpal Singh, the opposition lawyer-legislator detained twice under the ISA, suggested years later that Dr. Mahathir's silence concealed an ulterior motive. Speaking in Parliament, he asked rhetorically "why didn't the prime minister do anything" when the Sultan of Johore, as king, killed the caddy. He added, "That time, the prime minister wanted to use him...he used him to fire the Lord President, Tun Salleh Abas, and some other things. That's the reason".[64]

  Dr. Mahathir's contention that he was carrying out the king's instruction that Salleh be sacked sat oddly with established practice and the prime minister's own fiercely held view that the monarchy had no place in political affairs. Under the Constitution, the king acted on the advice of the prime minister, not the other way around. When he was no longer king, the Sultan of Johore apologized to Salleh for his role in Salleh's dismissal, saying he was "made use of" in 1988.[65] The sultan invited Salleh to his palace and expressed regret over what had happened more than four years earlier. "In the meeting, the Johore Sultan openly asked for my forgiveness because of his involvement in the move to dismiss me as the lord president in 1988," Salleh said.[66]

  After he left politics, Dr. Mahathir said the king also had been upset by another letter from Salleh, sent earlier, in which Salleh complained about noise during repair work at the king's palace, near Salleh's house.[67] When the charges against Salleh were published, however, royal displeasure over renovations was not one of them. Rather, many stemmed from speeches and interviews Salleh had given, and some even related to his behaviour after suspension.

  In essence, Salleh was accused of being biased against the government. The proceedings against him were considered by independent legal experts to be highly improper in several respects. For a start, Dr. Mahathir, as his accuser, got to name the six-member tribunal. Only one judge met the principle of being of superior rank to Salleh, despite the availability of suitable candidates, while the inclusion of the speaker of the House of Representatives was inappropriate under Malaysia's separation of powers doctrine. The tribunal refused Salleh's application for the hearings to be open, and declined to adjourn to give his British counsel time to appear for him.

  The participation of Hamid Omar "made a mockery of the whole process".[68] As acting lord president, Hamid stood to be confirmed in that position if Salleh was convicted, and as chairman he would cast the deciding vote if the panel was deadlocked. Worse, Hamid was an interested party as one of the 20 judges who approved the letter written by Salleh to the king.

  Although the public did not know, Hamid, too, was vulnerable to pressure, having lost a considerable amount of money investing in a company that subsequently performed poorly. His financial losses, as well as social indiscretions, were known to the government, having been circulated in a surat layang, the contents of which he confirmed, in a private interview, to be accurate.[69] Hamid told a Bar Council delegation that urged him not to accept a role in the tribunal he feared he would be dismissed if he refused. "If I am sacked, will you or the Bar Council compensate my losses of remuneration," he said.[70]

  Convinced he could not get a fair hearing, Salleh withdrew and sought an order from the High Court to halt the tribunal for being allegedly unconstitutional and illegal. Failing to get a response and fearing the tribunal was within days of submitting its report to the king, Salleh's counsel sought a temporary ban from the Supreme Court. The most senior judge — considering that the lord president was suspended and that the acting lord president was involved in the hearing — took the initiative and convened a five-member panel that issued the stay order. Soon after, those five judges were also suspended, after a complaint by Hamid that they conspired to hold a special session of the court without his approval. A second tribunal was established to hear charges of gross misbehaviour against the five.

  The first tribunal's report, described by an eminent Queen's Counsel in Britain as "the most despicable document in modern legal history", found Salleh guilty of misconduct and recommended his removal.[71] He was sacked as lord president with effect from 8 May 1988. On the same day, the appeal by the UMNO 11 was heard by a mixed panel of five Supreme and High Court judges, presided over by Hamid, and dismissed the following day. Dr. Mahathir had survived. As Salleh wrote later, "I have no doubt and few would now disagree — that it was the UMNO saga that led to my destruction as a judge."[72]

  The second tribunal's report — the work of "young colonels [who] were appointed to sit in judgment against generals", since three of the five members were relatively junior judges of the High Court and the accused were all Supreme Court judges[73] — recommended in a split vote that two be dismissed and the three others reinstated. When Hamid subsequently was confirmed as Lord President of the Supreme Court of Malaysia, one constitutional scholar wrote, "This elevation of a man, who many believe had violated the fundamental rules of natural justice, underscored the irregularity of the whole episode."[74] The Malaysian Bar, representing all the country's lawyers, passed a resolution of no confidence in Hamid by a vote of 1,002 to 0. All the High Court judges who were involved in the affair were promoted to the Supreme Court in due course.

  The assault on the judiciary, as it was ever after known, though motivated by political factors, opened the way for money to seep into the system. Some of the judges who played ball with the Mahathir administration rose rapidly and could not resist the temptation of bribes. They came to occupy some of the most senior positions in the judiciary, seemingly untouchable as long as they cooperated with their political masters. The integrity of at least three heads of the judiciary was "called into question".[75]

  Indications surfaced in the mid-1990s that litigants in several civil and commercial cases had manoeuvred to have their cases heard before judges of their choice.[76] According to one judge, where lawyers once took books, law reports and legal authorities to court, they now carried cash so the judges could reach a decision "with complete disregard for facts and the law!".[77] The judge anonymously circulated a 33-page document listing 112 allegations of impropriety: 39 charges of corruption, 21 of abuse of power, and 52 of misconduct, immorality or other indiscretions.[78] The government forced the judge, Syed Ahmad Idid Syed Abdullah Aidid, to resign, but d
id not prosecute him, even though it declared his allegations baseless and said all the dozen judges questioned by investigators were clean.

  What many regarded as the "final nail hammered into the coffin of judicial independence" was another constitutional amendment in 1994.[79] Apart from restructuring Malaysia's judicial hierarchy, it allowed a judge to be dismissed for breaching a proposed, government prescribed code of ethics. Although the restructuring, to create an appeal court at home following the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council in Britain in 1985, was necessary, the adoption of new nomenclature aroused suspicion. The Supreme Court reverted to its original name, the Federal Court, and the lord president became the chief justice. Seemingly innocent, the renaming exercise could be perceived as further subtle diminution of the prestige of the judiciary.[80]

  Later, Dr. Mahathir said it would have made no difference if a full panel of the Supreme Court had considered the appeal against the judgment outlawing UMNO. He said UMNO "wanted nothing more than the validation of the election results making me president and Ghafar Baba deputy president".[81] Without explaining how he would have dealt with two UMNOs, had the appeal by the UMNO 11 been successful, Dr. Mahathir said that even if the full bench had heard the appeal, "I'm quite sure that I'll somehow or other manage to stay on as leader of UMNO."[82] As it was, Hamid, Dr. Mahathir's choice for lord president, handed him a clear-cut victory.

  In March 1988, before the final court decision on the legality of UMNO, the government had amended the Societies Act to facilitate the transfer of the old party's assets to New UMNO. All New UMNO had to do was adopt a constitution that closely resembled the old one and admit a majority of UMNO's members. The amendments contained disincentives for dissidents tempted to cause trouble. If those who did not join the new party objected formally to the assets transfer, they could be held liable for their share of the old party's debt. Dr. Mahathir made sure his most committed opponents, especially those associated with the attempt to form UMNO Malaysia, were not admitted to New UMNO. The rest he courted in a nation-wide membership drive, backed with the full armory of government patronage, as well as the usual coercive measures to discourage intransigence.

  Tengku Razaleigh formed a new party but was not permitted to use the name UMNO. He settled for Semangat '46, or Spirit of '46, in the hope that it would evoke the Malay community fervour of UMNO's founding year. A dissident strategy to stage rolling by-elections got off to a promising start in mid-1988 when a Musa ally, former welfare minister Shahrir Abdul Samad, resigned to re-contest his seat in Johore as an independent. He whipped the New UMNO candidate backed by the National Front machine, on a platform of rebuking Dr. Mahathir over the sacking of Salleh Abas. But any hope of spurring disaffection and building momentum dissipated when the New UMNO candidate pipped the Spirit of '46 standard bearer in an overwhelmingly Malay Johore state constituency five months later. After the National Front easily retained a Malay-majority parliamentary seat in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur in January 1989 — with a Malaysian Chinese Association novice against an old-style, tainted Spirit of '46 candidate — the rebel offensive was effectively dead.

  Although Dr. Mahathir suffered a heart attack in January and required immediate surgery, he had emerged as the undisputed victor from the UMNO power struggle. Musa and many of his followers were enticed to join Dr. Mahathir's UMNO without any promise of reward, leaving Tengku Razaleigh commanding only 12 seats in the House of Representatives, and with narrowing prospects. Dr. Mahathir continued to discard anyone whose loyalty was suspect, demanding fidelity to his leadership above other qualities. "I don't need intelligent, honest, hard-working people in Parliament," he told Mohamed Tawfik Ismail, a first-term parliamentarian and Musa ally from Johore he was about to axe. Urging Tawfik to go into business, he said, "My members of parliament should stand when I enter the chamber, thump the table and shout, 'Long Live Mahathir'."[83] As political scientist Gordon Means observed, after a couple of years of turmoil, "For political friend and foe alike, Dr. Mahathir had become the epicenter of politics."[84]

  Despite the instillation in him of five coronary bypass arteries, Dr. Mahathir returned to the scene after several months convalescing with no erosion of his authority. With winner's disdain, he continued to enhance the power of the executive branch. Parliament passed amendments to the ISA and other laws on emergency powers, crime and drug prevention to remove judicial review. In the 1990 election, Dr. Mahathir led the National Front to another comfortable victory, winning 127 of the 180 seats, against Spirit of '46 in separate alliances with both PAS and the Democratic Action Party. Although the National Front was floored in Tengku Razaleigh's home state of Kelantan, losing all state and federal seats, Dr. Mahathir retained his two-thirds majority in Parliament. After Dr. Mahathir scored his greatest electoral triumph in 1995, capturing 162 of 192 parliamentary seats, a demoralized Tengku Razaleigh and supporters disbanded Spirit of '46 and drifted back to UMNO. According to a joke doing the rounds, UMNO stood for Under Mahathir No Opposition.

  Similarly, Dr. Mahathir concentrated power at the top of UMNO, particularly in the presidency. His display of "brute strength" in routing the dissidents — as Musa Hitam described it — marked Dr. Mahathir as not only a superior leader and strategist, but also an unforgiving one. Seeped into the psyche of every UMNO ladder-climber was the gnawing fear that to make what could be construed as a move against Dr. Mahathir invited political oblivion. If he could destroy Musa and Tengku Razaleigh, he would not hesitate to snuff out their own political careers — and the good life enjoyed by them and their friends. Musa called it "a political Mahathir thing": the prime minister's "ability to create this worry, because if you are so powerful nobody dares challenge you. And he managed to create that impression. And nobody dared, indeed."[85]

  Still, Dr. Mahathir took no chances. After his narrow squeak in 1987, New UMNO's constitution was changed to make it almost impossible for anyone to challenge him and his deputy by arranging so-called bonus votes for the number of nominations that candidates received. Every nomination received from party divisions for the posts of president and deputy president carried with it ten bonus votes. The number of votes that could be gathered through nominations almost equaled the number of ballots cast by delegates in the actual election. If that was not enough to dissuade rivals, the rules were altered again so that presidential candidates had to be nominated by at least 30 per cent of UMNO's divisions. Dr. Mahathir was allowed to appoint the head of the party's youth and women's wings, a temporary expedient that was reversed a few years later to allow elections again for both posts.[86] Amendments in 1998 allowing the triennial party elections to be postponed for up to 18 months gave Dr. Mahathir even more room to re-order adverse circumstances to his liking. And there would be no recourse to the courts again over voting irregularities: Legislation passed in late 1989 gave political parties the final say over the interpretation of their constitutions.

  According to political scientist John Funston, "under a Malaysian version of 'guided democracy', Dr. Mahathir frequently asked for, and was granted, full power to make decisions on contentious party issues".[87] By the time the General Assembly arrived each year, everything of note had been settled, right down to the detail of Dr. Mahathir's telling key delegates what was expected in pre-assembly, closed-door sessions. What the public saw was a staged performance designed to reinforce the image of unity behind Dr. Mahathir's leadership, with his presidential and summary addresses broadcast live to the nation.[88]

  By continuing to permit rivalries in UMNO one level below him, Dr. Mahathir countered pressures for a generational shift in the party's leadership and kept the focus of succession away from himself. As Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim, 46, prepared to dislodge Ghafar Baba, 68, from the deputy presidency in 1993, Dr. Mahathir shifted from a plea for no contest, to a neutral stance, to a comment that was interpreted as an endorsement of Anwar, his obvious choice to succeed him. Anwar marshalled such a show of strength before the General Asse
mbly that Ghafar had no choice but to step down. Anwar not only became vice president unopposed; he also brought to power a slate of three vice presidents known as the Vision Team, while other followers captured most seats on the Supreme Council.

  The results signalled danger for Dr. Mahathir, though also a warning for anyone tempted to try and exploit the situation, for Dr. Mahathir had shown he was politically astute, even lethal, when seemingly cornered. Analysts calculated that Anwar probably had enough control of the party to force Dr. Mahathir into early retirement before long, if he so chose. Dr. Mahathir was testy when asked by journalists if he was losing his grip on UMNO. "Would you like to bet?" he retorted. He made his point about still being boss by waiting a month before officially making Anwar deputy prime minister. In another move to circumvent Anwar's advancement, he appointed Muhyiddin Yassin, who topped the vice presidential poll for Anwar's team, to a junior portfolio. Clearly not confident, though, Dr. Mahathir invoked party unity as a higher cause than democracy and insisted on a "no contest" agreement with Anwar for their positions before 1999.

  Although their relations were strained at times, Anwar was still on track to succeed Dr. Mahathir as of early 1998, but complications that arose over the deepening effects of the Asian economic crisis wrecked transition plans. On 2 September, a day after introducing capital controls, Dr. Mahathir sacked Anwar as deputy premier and finance minister, claiming he was morally unfit. The real reason was that he believed Anwar was trying to take advantage of the economic upheaval to unseat him. On 3 September, the UMNO Supreme Council complied with Dr. Mahathir's demand that Anwar be stripped of his deputy presidency and party membership. On 20 September, Anwar was arrested under the ISA and held without access to a lawyer or his family. When he appeared in court at the end of the month, charged with abuse of power and sodomy, he had a black eye, the result of being bashed in custody.