Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Read online

  Malay under-representation in his college, where 630 of 700 students were non-Malay, reinforced the impression of their exclusion.[34] Against strong opposition, Mahathir argued for the retention of a 75 per cent quota in favour of Malays for government scholarships to the college.[35] While Mahathir did well in his medical studies, it worried him that other Malays, who numbered just seven of the intake of 75 students in his year, often struggled. Only four of them graduated as doctors, despite special coaching to which Mahathir contributed. One who had trouble with physics and chemistry and needed his help — she had not been able to study these subjects in her secondary school — was Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali, the only female among the Malay students, who was from a respected family in Selangor state. Although Mahathir was shy and awkward in the presence of girls — meeting the opposite sex was a totally new experience for him — he soon became "possessive" and "jealous".[36] Dr. Mahathir, who graduated in 1953, married his first and only girlfriend in 1956, a union that was to last a lifetime.

  Not surprisingly, Mahathir acquired a jaundiced view of the often unruly, poorly educated Chinese who jostled aggressively in the crossroads port. He knew from personal experience how the Malays were often brushed aside and their dignity flouted. He once asked a taxi driver to take him to the home of a woman friend, only to be delivered to the servants' quarters of the house.[37] Mahathir had a long memory, particularly when it came to insults and enemies. Invited to Singapore in 1978 by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew soon after becoming Malaysia's deputy prime minister, Dr. Mahathir did not try to hide his deep anti-Singapore feelings. He told his host that Singapore Chinese looked down upon the Malays.[38]

  At a personal level, however, Mahathir had no trouble at all making friends with people of all ethnic backgrounds. In the Class of 47 — the students thoughtfully named it after their freshman year to include those who graduated late or dropped out — the bonds were especially warm and enduring. They had a deal that those who turned up for dull and dreary classes signed attendance for the absentees. "We shared our lecture notes and even our case write-ups in obstetrics," recalled Wong Hee Ong. "In all this, Mahathir was one of us."[39]

  They held regular reunions, in Singapore or Malaysia, culminating in a 60th anniversary gathering in 2007, with Dr. Mahathir always making a supreme effort to attend. While he was prime minister, he would tell his bodyguards and minders to leave, exposing himself to the ragging of aging medicos reliving their youth, and dishing it out to them in return. At these intensely private, informal gatherings, Dr. Mahathir and Dr. Siti Hasmah, both considered to have good voices — hers somewhat better than his — were usually called upon for a duet. In 1997, Dr. Mahathir sang My Way solo, with lyrics written for the occasion by class members and featuring American investor George Soros, blamed by the Malaysian leader for aggravating the Asian economic crisis that year.[40]

  Living away from home for the first time, Mahathir proved a true son of his father as he managed his time expertly. Socializing little beyond occasional visits to the cinema, he shunned campus politics, dismissing such activity as "playing games", and telling fellow students he preferred to participate in the real political drama unfolding on the Malay Peninsula.[41] Mahathir became president of the college Islamic Society, and edited and produced an issue of his medical school journal, the Cauldron. He continued writing articles regularly enough for the Straits Times and Sunday Times to help buy a motorcycle; Siti Hasmah rode pillion. His varied output, written in a "direct, didactic style", was a "remarkable accomplishment for a full-time student in a demanding discipline".[42] And it was appreciated, at least by the Straits Times. An editor called him to the paper's offices in Singapore and asked if he was interested in a job as a journalist. No, he was not.

  Singapore gave birth to an urban myth, that Mahathir thought of himself as an Indian when he entered university. The story was retold in several gossipy versions, losing none of its appeal across the decades. Academics, diplomats and even a former cabinet colleague delighted in passing along the details, all completely untrue. Mahathir's father considered himself a Malay and he ensured that all his children were nothing else but Malay.

  In his writings, which began before he went to Singapore, Mahathir identified totally with the Malays and showed he was intimately familiar with their customs, social life and problems, whether it was education, fishing or padi planting. His more overtly political contributions were polemical, and uncompromising in defence of Malay rights. Foreshadowing the nationalist stance that would make him a hero to many Malays when he entered Parliament, he criticized the colonial administration, called for the re-introduction of Malay as an official language, alongside English, and made the case for "retarding progress" sometimes in order to help the Malays advance. Well ahead of his time, he also advocated women's rights, arguing especially for women to be given opportunities in education and employment.[43] At the same time, Mahathir began to reveal critical opinions about the Malays themselves that would become another of his trademarks: for instance, their "low average intelligence quotient".[44]

  After graduating, Dr. Mahathir spent only four years in government service in Penang and Kedah before resigning to open a private practice, while his wife was to work as a doctor for the government for 25 years. Although the immediate reason for his quitting was the failure of a superior to support his application for a posting to study in a teaching hospital in Penang to be a surgeon, he also wanted to remain near his aging parents. Borrowing money from a brother-in-law, he opened in Alor Star the MAHA Clinic — a name meaning "great" in Malay that combined the first two letters of Mahathir and Hasmah, his wife[45] — in 1957. As one of only five private doctors in the town and the first Malay, he came to be known as "Dr. UMNO", with his office often identified as the "UMNO Clinic".

  Dr. Mahathir acquired the reputation of being a caring doctor, willing to make house calls at any hour and trudge across padi fields in the dark to treat patients. If they could not afford his fee, they settled by installment or paid what they had. But he never missed an opportunity to scold Malays when their performance fell short. Observing hard-working Chinese farmers next door producing more rice, he would ask idle Malays with more than a hint of sarcasm, "No rain this side?"[46]

  While the sarcasm was never far away, Dr. Mahathir would carry much of his bedside manner into politics: Even his sharpest comments, which stung, cut and wounded, were usually delivered in dulcet tones, as if advising an ill farmer to take his pills three times a day. Mukhriz Mahathir saw his father lose his temper and curse only once: when it was discovered just in time that someone in Dr. Mahathir's re-election campaign office had incorrectly completed his nomination papers in an attempt to sabotage his candidacy. The expletive was mild, Mukhriz said. "In Kedah, especially that generation, they swear somewhat politely."[47]

  Dexterous, Dr. Mahathir spent his spare time in a home workshop on carpentry, wood turning and metalwork. He built boats powered by outboard motors and used machinery to fashion wrought iron into name plates, lamps and chandeliers. "I like the feeling of building things, of working with wood or metal and creating something," he once told a British journalist. No one who witnessed him at his hobbies doubted he would have made a surgeon.

  Dr. Mahathir and Dr. Siti Hasmah were also involved in welfare and public health activities. While he, as President of the Kedah Tuberculosis Association, visited Indian workers on rubber plantations to treat and give advice to TB sufferers,[48] she threw her weight behind the Kedah Family Planning Association. At Dr. Mahathir's request, Shaari Daud, a federal bureaucrat and friend, helped him establish a private education association to finance the studies of disadvantaged Malay children.[49]

  The couple lost no time in starting what became a sizable and happy family: A daughter, Marina, arrived in June 1957, ten months after they were married. Altogether, the Mahathirs had seven children, five of whom joined the household in under nine years and lived for a while in Alor Star. Years later in Kuala Lumpur
, when they had left home to study overseas or marry, Prime Minister Mahathir and his wife, finding it "a little bit lonely" as empty-nesters,[50] and "fed up" waiting for grand children,[51] started what amounted to a second family. Dr. Mahathir built on his father's "strange liking for the letter M", as he once put it.[52] Where Mohamad Iskandar gave all five sons names starting with M, Dr. Mahathir did the same for his three girls as well as the four boys.

  Three of the kids were adopted in two different and unusual circumstances. The couple's third child, Melinda, actually chose Dr. Mahathir and his wife as her parents, rather than the other way around. They became her godparents in a traditional ceremony at the age of six months, after Dr. Mahathir cured her of a minor ailment. When he visited her house to treat her brother years later, she wanted to follow Dr. Mahathir home. He agreed, as did her parents, farmers who worked their own land at Tokai outside Alor Star. Siti Aisha Abdul Rahman joined the Mahathir family in 1960, aged six and with an M name, remaining until she married in 1982. She was treated the same as her brothers and sisters, except that she returned to the farm to spend school holidays with her real parents.[53]

  Dr. Mahathir was inspired to expand the family again on a state visit to Pakistan in 1983. Invited to review a national day parade by President Zia ul-Haq, he was struck by the "very good-looking children" in national dress. "I thought, wow, they look very nice to me. I thought I would adopt Pakistani children".[54] Later, a close friend who also wanted to adopt, visited Pakistan and selected four babies from an orphanage, and returned to Malaysia with them. In October 1984, the Mahathirs got a fourth son, Mazhar, nine months, and a third daughter, Maizura, seven months. Dr. Mahathir was 59 and Dr. Siti Hasmah 58.

  Growing up in Alor Star, the older children remember "an almost idyllic childhood", especially after they moved into a new, split-level brick home at Titi Gajah, 11 kilometres out of town — on the prestigious northern side.[55] Designed by Baharuddin Abu Kassim, the architect responsible for the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur, the house featured modern conveniences unknown to most locals and sat in spacious grounds that backed onto a river and opened at the front to a vista of almost endless green fields. Both parents stressed the traditional and religious values that had been drummed into them: honesty, gratitude, respect for elders, hard work and discipline, along with the importance of education and the value of money. Dr. Mahathir laughed when the kids entered newspaper contests involving a certain amount of luck. He told them that nothing came easy, and there was no shortcut to success. The fast track to corporal punishment was to lie, steal or commit another of the offences that were not tolerated. Dr. Mahathir got out the cane and, with the other children assembled to absorb the lesson, administered the requisite number of whacks to the offender's backside.[56] Although the girls escaped the cane, Marina recalled being soundly spanked when small for poking out her tongue at the gardener.[57]

  From the backblocks of Malaysia, the children learned about the wider world from their father. Marina was not allowed to have pen pals from South Africa or Israel because of apartheid and the Palestinian cause. Twice, an American teenager stayed with the family for a couple of months under a student exchange programme, which Dr. Mahathir "was really into", as Mukhriz Mahathir put it. The parents lost some of their enthusiasm, though, after Marina, at 16, returned from three months in California "quite influenced by the American way of life", in her mother's words. Marina had become "very forward, argumentative", Dr. Siti Hasmah said.[58] Marina later became a journalist, newspaper columnist and social activist, heading the non-governmental Malaysian AIDS Council for ten years.

  Indulging an entrepreneurial streak that had been with him since childhood, Dr. Mahathir invested in various businesses. In primary school, he had peddled balloons to earn pocket money, buying them at two cents for three and selling them at two cents each. If he inherited the business bug, it surely came from his mother. Wan Tempawan had been resourceful in contributing to the family budget. She rented space under the house to itinerant hawkers, who slept there and moved around selling their wares during the day. She also grew jasmine, which the children collected and threaded on string made from dried grass, fashioning garlands for sale.[59] Mohamad Iskandar's only foray into business, on the other hand, had flopped. Against his youngest son's advice, he sold fruit-producing land to buy two trishaws, which he rented out. "We never saw the rent or the trishaws again," said Dr. Mahathir.[60]

  Dr. Mahathir went into property development, tin mining, a franchised petrol station and a shop to do quick printing — sometimes to rescue Malay businessmen in financial trouble — though not all his ventures were profitable. Dr. Mahathir recalled that before the war there had been only two Malay shops in the whole of Alor Star.[61] He helped found the Malay Chamber of Commerce and later served as a director. "Mahathir was an inspiration," said locally-born Jaafar Ismail, who in 2007 was the executive director, infrastructure, of an Australian-listed international investment fund and asset management group. I saw business as a thing to do."[62]

  One of Dr. Mahathir's noteworthy investments began with his pitch to a sales representative, who distributed pharmaceuticals to doctors, to quit his Penang-based agency and join Dr. Mahathir in forming a rival company. Dr. Mahathir, with 30 per cent of the equity, was one of eight shareholders when MICO Farmasi Sdn. Bhd. was incorporated in 1964. He organized the financial side while the former salesman put together the management team and ran the company. It was called MICO, at Dr. Mahathir's suggestion, for Malaysian Indian Chinese Organization, because the owners were drawn from all three ethnic groups. In addition to distributing drugs wholesale throughout Kedah and Perlis states, the company operated a retail pharmacy in Alor Star. In 2008, 44 years later, MICO was humming along with a staff of ten, its original family shareholder structure still in place, including Dr. Mahathir's stake. The managing director was Haja Nasrudeen Abdul Kareem, 46, the physician son of the salesman-founder, who had taken over upon his father's death in 1992.[63]

  While Dr. Mahathir told friends he was trying to make money to launch his political bid, he did not hesitate to flaunt his wealth. He bought one of the biggest and most imposing automobiles ever produced by Detroit, a blue Pontiac. His later explanation that he acquired the car from a friend, who was the agent, because he was having trouble selling the Pontiac and offered it cheap — "only 12,000" dollars — and on installments, was only part of the story. At a time when most people in Alor Star walked or pedaled bicycles along dusty streets lined with low wooden buildings and everyone knew who owned which car, Dr. Mahathir was making a statement: It was symbol of his aspiration to prove the capabilities of the Malays", as one admirer saw.[64] Most immediately, it was a declaration that the boy from the wrong side of the tracks had arrived. "Maybe there's some element also of that," Dr. Mahathir conceded.

  In case anyone missed the point, Dr. Mahathir employed a Chinese driver. His later contention, that never realized that I was doing something odd" and that he hired the man because he asked for the job and spoke Malay, should be taken with more than a grain of salt. His friends in Kuala Lumpur certainly let him know they found the arrangement "unusual". Remember that Dr. Mahathir had cited Malays working as drivers as evidence of their marginalization in Singapore. As he once told a friend, driver sits in the front of the car, but who is the tuan? The master sits in the back. Who opens the door? The driver."[65]

  Nationally, the UMNO-led Malays, energized by the likes of Dr. Mahathir, secured arrangements for independence largely on their terms, following British re-recognition in 1948 that Malaya was essentially the land of the Malays. Independent Malaya, which materialized on 31 August 1957, was a "Malay" nation-state where the "special position" of the Malays was recognized in the Constitution. The sovereignty of the sultans in the nine Malay states was reaffirmed, and they were given powers to reserve government jobs, licences, services and scholarships for Malays, exercised in practice through political leaders.

  But while the British
conceded Malay political primacy among the various races, they insisted that UMNO work out a basis for inter-racial cooperation, unity and harmony. It took the form of an Alliance linking UMNO with political parties representing the Chinese and Indians. The three parties negotiated what came into focus later as an unwritten "social contract", which most Malays hoped would lead to economic improvement while most non-Malays hoped to gain political influence. Although Malay was the national language and Islam "the" religion, qualified non-Malay residents of Malaya would share citizenship with Malays, and they would enjoy freedom of worship. The terms of the agreement remained contentious, making the future nation-state subject to continuing racial pressures and challenges.[66] Just as some Malays always would be ready to press even harder for ketuanan Melayu, Malay supremacy, there would be non-Malays prepared to resist. Dr. Mahathir would be in the thick of the recurring wrangling.

  Although Dr. Mahathir was well placed to plunge into national politics, trouble loomed in the form of his nagging disagreements with Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, who was acclaimed as Bapa Merdeka, Father of Independence. At one level, it might be considered an inherited clash: Master Mohamad Iskandar had found it necessary to get outside help to keep a young Tunku Abdul Rahman in check in his school. The first to admit in adulthood that he was naughty and in need of discipline as a child, the Tunku used to arrive every day on the shoulders of an aged palace attendant, resplendent in a gold-studded cap as part of his royal regalia. With the approval of the Tunku's mother, Mohamad Iskandar had put a stop to the fancy dress, in the interests of equality among the students, and he devised a quick solution to a teacher's complaint that the Tunku was disrupting his class. He sat him near the teacher's table.[67]