Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Read online

  In government, Dr. Mahathir did not try to hide his dislike of Australia. Hosting a state dinner in Kuala Lumpur for Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser in 1982, Dr. Mahathir delivered caustic comments that were "unnecessarily provocative and in extremely poor taste", according to a Malaysian account.[65] On his only official visit to Australia in 1984 he was immensely sympathetic to Prime Minister Hawke, who broke down and wept during their meeting, having just learned of his daughter's potentially fatal drug addiction. Responding both as a fellow parent and doctor, Dr. Mahathir went to considerable personal lengths to get information that he thought might help the Hawke family.[66] But politics was something else. Dr. Mahathir's failure to make another official visit to Australia in 18 years was an expression of disapproval by one of Asia's most travelled leaders.

  His general gripe was that Australians, in or out of government, were too fond of criticizing — "that we are not up to their mark and we don't know how to run our country; we don't practice human rights; our democracy is defective...".[67] An exchange in 1988 showed just how deeply Dr. Mahathir resented such unsolicited advice. Responding to a protest by more than 100 Australian members of parliament over the detention without trial of Malaysian politicians, activists and intellectuals in Operation Lalang, Dr. Mahathir wrote, "When Australia was at the stage of Malaysia's present development, you solved your aborigines problem by simply shooting them". After explaining the need for "harsh" laws to ensure tensions were contained in a multi-racial country, he told the parliamentarians to "please concentrate on fair treatment for the aborigines and the Asians in your midst and leave us alone".[68] While Dr. Mahathir was prime minister, bilateral relations would remain in what Malaysian academic Shamsui Amri Baharuddin called a state of "stable tension" — trouble could flare at any time.[69]

  Dr. Mahathir's regular skirmishes with Western governments, together with his use of crude language and references to race and religion, invited the judgment that he was blindly anti-Caucasian — and anti-Semitic, since the religion he targeted was usually Judaism. Yet he formed close personal friendships not only with Margaret Thatcher, but other prominent Western officials such as Henry Kissinger, the Jewish former U.S. secretary of state. He also courted leading international corporate figures, persuading the likes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates to act as an adviser to Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor.[70] In fact, most of Dr. Mahathir's anti-West rhetoric was designed to provide him with political cover on the domestic front, or give Malaysians a reason to close ethnic ranks and rally behind the government. It was a potent tool when Dr. Mahathir's leadership of the party or country was under threat.[7l]

  As for his outrageous and sometimes odd remarks about Jews, Dr. Mahathir chose to live recklessly. His statements no doubt were anti-Semitic at times, and to the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, formed specifically to fight anti-Semitism, Dr. Mahathir was an "unrepentant anti-Semite".[72] But he denied it, and almost no one who knew him well or observed him at close quarters for any length of time believed he was anti-Semitic. Dr. Mahathir had the habit of denigrating anyone or anything he did not like, and he was not about to restrain himself over Jews. One problem was that he failed to distinguish between "Jews" and "Israel" or "Israelis", using the terms interchangeably. As one of Israel's fiercest mainstream critics — Malaysia did not recognize Tel Aviv — Dr. Mahathir was irked that Muslims could so easily be labelled terrorists, while any condemnation of Israel — a "terrorist state", as he called it — brought an outcry alleging anti-Semitism. Another problem was that Dr. Mahathir had long presented his views of race in terms of stereotypes, distinguished not only by ethnic origin but also other characteristics. As an illustration, he said in The Malay Dilemma that Jews "are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively".[73] He also wrote: "Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them the commercial control of Europe and provoked an anti-Semitism...".[74] Dr. Mahathir dealt similarly, and at length, with Malaysia's Chinese and Malays — complete with theories of inbreeding — reserving his harshest judgment for his own community. He described the Malays as chronically backward and subservient. So while his analytical approach was hardly scientific and his conclusions questionable, he clearly did not discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity.

  The record showed that the New York Philharmonic cancelled a proposed visit to Malaysia in 1984 after the government demanded that a work by Swiss Jewish composer Ernest Bloch be removed from the programme, and Steven Spielberg withdrew "Schindler's List" from distribution in Malaysia after the Cabinet ruled in 1994 that several scenes be cut from the movie. Dr. Mahathir voiced no public objection when some UMNO members handed out copies of American industrialist Henry Ford's anti-Semitic book, The International Jew, at the UMNO General Assembly in 2003.[75] Dr. Mahathir countered that he personally invited 14 Israeli high school students to visit Malaysia in 1997, followed soon after by an Israeli cricket team. "I have friends who are Jews," he said, without a trace of irony or embarrassment.[76]

  Dr. Mahathir, the politician and Islamic statesman, used extreme language against the perceived enemies of Islam as a device to get his message across in the Muslim world. The message was as pragmatic as it was uncompromising, that if 1.3 billion Muslims were oppressed and humiliated it was largely their own fault, and only they could rescue themselves. Dr. Mahathir couched his problematic statements in the "dichotomies of the world-versus-Islam", familiar to his Muslim audience, to open their minds for the unpalatable advice that inevitably followed.[77] The speech he gave to the opening of the OIC summit in Kuala Lumpur two weeks before he retired in 2003 was typical, if more acerbic than usual. His comment, that "the Jews rule this world by proxy" and "get others to fight and die for them", made headlines around the world and was widely condemned.[78] The 56 other Islamic leaders in Dr. Mahathir's audience also heard him urge Muslims to summon the political will to build stable and well administered countries, "economically and financially strong, industrially competent and technologically advanced".[79] His speech was nuanced enough for him to note that "not all non-Muslims are against us" and even many Jews "do not approve of what the Israelis are doing...We must win their hearts and minds".[80]

  Throughout the 1980s, Dr. Mahathir caught international attention by denouncing the West for policies that furthered its prosperity at the expense of developing countries. Based on Malaysia's experience producing tin and rubber, he complained that commodity prices were manipulated by rich countries to make money for middlemen, while the prices of imported manufactured goods were set by the Western countries to ensure a hefty profit. He said speculators, including banks, could alter exchange rates as they wished, turning the trade in commodities into a trade in currencies. Taking up the cause of all small and developing countries, Dr. Mahathir said they were "victims of an unjust and inequitable economic system that seeks to deny us the legitimate rewards of our labour and natural resources".[81] He attacked the "free traders of convenience" in the West, who resorted to protectionism in the form of quotas, tariffs, high interest rates and exorbitant freight charges, once developing countries became competitive.[82] Observing that the big powers formed exclusive "economic clubs" to guard their own interests, such as the Group of Seven industrialized nations, he charged them with bullying, hypocrisy and deceit. The uncaring North, as he collectively called them, enforced a "cycle of low income, lack of capital and know-how and continuing low income" that entrapped most developing nations, the South.[83]

  It was a withering critique, one Dr. Mahathir could deliver because Malaysia was less dependent on foreign aid and assistance than other potential critics and less susceptible to retribution by the major powers.[84] True, he sometimes went overboard and claimed to fear "a new form of colonialism".[85] He also indulged in his own deceit, not only ignoring Japan's protectionist policies but pretending Japan was not part of the industrialized world. He once told a business audience — disingenuously, as an analyst noted[86] — that "Japan may be classified
as developed but it is still developing vigorously".[87]

  Pronouncing the North-South dialogue dead, Dr. Mahathir unveiled a series of initiatives aimed at encouraging cooperation among poorer countries and making them less dependent on the industrialized world. Working through the Non-Aligned Movement and the once-shunned Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings, he was instrumental in forming the South-South Commission, whose first secretary-general was a Malaysian. Dr. Mahathir also set up the Group of 15, a core of developing countries that first met in Kuala Lumpur in 1989 to explore closer economic ties. His other contributions included a bilateral payments arrangement enabling any two participants to settle their trade without using foreign currency, and a data exchange centre to provide advice to small and medium-sized industries in the South.

  The end of the Cold War and its promise of a new world order opened the way for more assertive types of leaders from developing countries, such as Dr. Mahathir, to make their mark internationally. Having vanquished his political foes and seen the underground Communist Party abandon its 40-year insurgency, Dr. Mahathir carefully reoriented external relations towards developing countries without damaging ties to the developed world. With the Malaysian economy starting to catch fire again, delegations from developing countries dropped in to learn his secrets, and Dr. Mahathir was in demand as a speaker at global forums. Named chairman of a group to plot the long-term future of the Commonwealth, he also headed another outfit to find a solution to apartheid South Africa's political quagmire.[88] Reflecting his activism, Malaysia was elected to a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in 1998-99, the second term during Dr. Mahathir's premiership, and to the presidency of the U.N. General Assembly. "By the 1990s", wrote Joseph Liow, the political scientist, "Mahathir Mohamad had firmly established himself as a charismatic leader with a reputation for outspokenness and daring to challenge prevailing norms in international relations".[89]

  Malaysia identified diplomatic niches where its limited resources might be stretched to play a leading role. For example, based on a peacekeeping tradition that began in 1962, Malaysia became one of the top ten troop contributors to U.N. operations in the early 1990s, when it simultaneously dispatched forces to Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.[90] During the decade, Malaysia also sent peacekeepers to the Iran-Iraq border, Namibia, Cambodia, Kuwait and East Timor. It opened a peacekeeping training centre in Malaysia, to which more than a dozen countries, among them the United States, Canada and France, sent trainees.[91]

  Mindful of the worldwide Islamic resurgence and its impact on Muslim-majority Malaysia, where the opposition Islamic party was pushing for an Islamic state, Dr. Mahathir crafted a foreign policy to serve that specific need. By winning international recognition as a champion of Islamic causes, he made it almost impossible for the opposition to claim he was neglecting Islam. It is doubtful, though, that Dr. Mahathir's commitment went beyond posturing, as when the crunch came — for instance, over Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait — Malaysia ignored public opinion and voted with the United States in the U.N. to use force to evict the Iraqis.

  Inheriting a concern for the liberation of Palestine, Dr. Mahathir pursued the issue with added fervour, excoriating Israel and its Western supporters, exposing what he called Zionist influence in international news organizations and straining relations with Singapore by objecting to Israeli President Chaim Herzog's visit to the city-state in 1986. Through the OIC, Dr. Mahathir also got involved in trying to settle the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, and actively supported the mujahidin in their resistance to the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. But it was the defence of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, which proved to be Dr. Mahathir's Islamic preoccupation. He secretly provided the Bosnians with heavy weapons.[92] It was an ideal tragedy on which to unleash his polemical skills and flay the West for practising double standards over its reluctance to stop Serbian ethnic cleansing. Dr. Mahathir's efforts to reactivate the Non-Aligned Movement in the post-Cold War era and galvanize it to adopt a resolution calling for the expulsion of the rump state of Yugoslavia from the U.N. caught the movement's imagination at a conference in Jakarta in 1992. Dr. Mahathir emerged as the "New Voice for the Third World", as a cover of the weekly Far Eastern Economic Review proclaimed.[93]

  Under fire by Western environmentalists over its forestry practices, Malaysia also rallied developing countries to ensure their views were heard at a landmark U.N. sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Dr. Mahathir told ministerial representatives of more than 50 developing economies, who gathered in Kuala Lumpur beforehand, that the industrialized world's fear of environmental degradation provided them with leverage that had not previously existed. He asserted that developed nations, if they wanted to save the forests in poorer countries, had a responsibility to provide the funds and technology to enable them to shift to other sources of income. As the Economist noted, the Malaysians "emerged as the leaders of the developing world on the road to Rio".[94] Moreover, at the summit, Dr. Mahathir and his officials maintained the pressure so that the general development interests of the South were persistently linked to the overall discussion of environmental issues.[95]

  As Third World champion, Dr. Mahathir took a prominent part in a debate on "Asian values" that raged the length of East Asia and across the Pacific in the early 1990s. Triumphant after the demise of Communism, President Bill Clinton's first administration aggressively sought to spread its victorious version of democracy and human rights among the unconvinced and unconverted. Dr. Mahathir joined government-employed Singaporean intellectuals in counter-attacking by contending that Asian values, in contrast with Western values, put greater stress on community than individuals, and emphasized economic and social, rather than civil and political, rights.

  Dr. Mahathir had longed railed against the British for ruling Malaya in authoritarian fashion, only to insist that the inexperienced country practice democracy the instant it became independent. In the name of Asian values, which conveniently deflected attention from his own blemished record, Dr. Mahathir listed societal defects — crime, violence, drug addiction, homosexuality, chronic vandalism, illegitimate births — to suggest the American political system did not suit Asia. Is there only one form of democracy or only one high priest to interpret it, he asked rhetorically. Attempts by the West to impose democracy and human rights were disguised efforts to weaken Asian countries and undermine their competitiveness, he said, and a U.S. move, backed by labour unions, to increase wages in Asia had the same objective. He was particularly outraged by the West's efforts to link human rights with aid or trade. Malaysia and Singapore were the active participants at a preparatory meeting in Bangkok that staked out a loose common Asian stand for a U.N. Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993. The debate showed Dr. Mahathir's gift of invective at its best, while his "exposure of some Western illogicalities was devastating".[96]

  Combining his Third World spokesmanship with vigorous commercial diplomacy, Dr. Mahathir was able to open the way for Malaysian companies in some of the poorest developing and former communist countries. On his frequent trips abroad, he packed his aircraft with local business people and helped them find markets for Malaysian manufactured goods and investment opportunities in impoverished corners of Europe, Africa, the Americas and wide swaths of Asia. Malaysian companies signed contracts for everything from housing in Albania, to flower farming in Uzbekistan, gold exploration in Kazakhstan, road building in India and bridge construction in Uruguay.[97]

  Dr. Mahathir's anti-West stance translated into commercial benefits in several countries that were hostile to the United States, among them Iran, Somalia and Liberia. Petronas, Malaysia's national oil and gas company, took a 30 per cent stake in an Iranian oil venture, despite an American law that penalized foreign companies doing business with the Islamic republic. "We will not submit to what the United States dictates to us," Dr. Mahathir declared.[98] Dr. Mahathir's staunch opposition to apartheid
and friendship with Nelson Mandela paid off in the form of large housing, township and harbour development contracts after his African National Congress came to power in 1994. They were awarded to Malaysian companies, despite substantially lower bids by international developers.[99] In some of the remote markets, the Malaysians were treated like royalty.[100] "When I go to Argentina, all doors are open," commented businessman Salehuddin Hashim. "That's the impact of what Dr. Mahathir has done with his pushing of South-South cooperation."[101]

  But much of the activity was hasty and ill-conceived and did not pay dividends to Malaysia Inc. Many projects, announced with much fanfare and little research, were primarily political and did not get beyond the memorandum of understanding stage. "It's well known in Malaysia that one of our biggest exports is MOUs," quipped Ananda Krishnan, one of the country's most successful entrepreneurs.[102]

  Some investments proved embarrassing, as when evidence surfaced of unofficial associated payments. The "tea money" for a large, private Malaysian port-city redevelopment in Cambodia included the gift of an aircraft for one of the country's two premiers.[103] In post-apartheid South Africa, where Malaysia surprisingly emerged as the second biggest source of foreign investment, the "Malaysian state or state-linked corporate sector" donated about six million rand to the African National Congress just before the 1994 elections.[104] Malaysia's reputation was also tarnished by environmental studies criticizing Malaysian logging practices in Guyana, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and other South Pacific countries.