Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Read online

  K.S. Nathan, "Malaysia-Singapore Relations: Retrospect and Prospect", pp. 398-399.

  K. Kesavapany, "Promising Start to Malaysia-Singapore Relations", in Saw Swee Hock and K. Kesavapany, eds, Malaysia: Recent Trends and Challenges (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2006), pp. 275-286.

  Kaminder Singh Dhillon, Malaysian Foreign Policy in the Mahathir Era (1981-2003), p. 132.

  Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, "Abramoff Bragged of Ties to Rove", latimes.com, 15 February 2006, http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-abramoff15feb,l,927022,full.story?coll=la-headlines-politics (accessed 13 March 2006).

  Jim Lobe, "Mahathir Gets White House's 'Rehabilitation'", AsiaTimes Online, 17 May 2002, http://www.atimes.com/sea-asia/DE17Ae03.html (accessed 27 January 2006).

  Ahmed Rashid, "What Do You Think of America Now?", Far Eastern Economic Review, 3 April 2003, p. 12.

  Leslie Lopez, "Malaysia Strains U.S. Tolerance".

  Barry Wain, "Washington to Reward Its Friends", Asian Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2003.

  "Mahathir's Criticism Causes Tension", Far Eastern Economic Review, 10 April 2003, p. 8.

  Interview with Abdullah Ahmad, 23 March 2007.

  ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand concluded their negotiations on a free-trade agreement in Singapore in 2008.

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  The Destruction of a Designated Heir

  In the most sensational 48 hours in Malaysian politics, Dr. Mahathir in 1998 sacked Anwar Ibrahim as deputy prime minister and finance minister and had him expelled from UMNO. Not since the 1969 racial riots, which were confined largely to Kuala Lumpur, had the country been gripped by such drama. And that was only the beginning. As Dr. Mahathir sought to crush Anwar politically with the full weight of the state, he was pilloried by the police and press, arrested under emergency laws and bashed in jail. Married with six children and a reputation as a principled and thoughtful Muslim leader, Anwar was accused of being both a womanizer and a homosexual, financially corrupt and a threat to national security.

  Like the 1987 UMNO factional fight, the Mahathir-Anwar rupture split the Malay community down to family level and reverberated beyond the political system itself. It brought a sharp reaction from many regional and world capitals, where Anwar was known and respected. As he was dismissed from the government the day after Malaysia imposed capital controls to deal with the Asian economic crisis, the international community took an even keener interest in his removal. Dr. Mahathir and Anwar had diverged in their responses to the crisis, and the deputy premier's departure was as unwelcome to foreign investors as the restrictions on the outflow of funds.

  Protesting his innocence and claiming to be the victim of a "conspiracy at the highest level of government", Anwar refused to go quietly.[1] He slipped back into the adversarial role he once played as a student and Islamic leader, rallying Malaysians to demand widespread reform before being arrested. Considered a political prisoner by international human rights groups, Anwar was jailed for 15 years after two trials that failed to meet minimum standards of justice. With Dr. Mahathir's assistance, Anwar's enemies in UMNO had achieved their aim of denying him the top political prize, though his own miscalculations contributed to his downfall. Dr. Mahathir continued to insist that Anwar was dropped because he was morally unfit, but few believed it even after he had served a jail term. Rather, the evidence suggested that Dr. Mahathir had concluded that Anwar, the man he had brought into UMNO 16 years earlier and anointed as his successor, was planning to use the economic turmoil to dislodge him and take over the party and the country. Dr. Mahathir had struck pre-emptively to squash any possible challenge.

  While Dr. Mahathir ensured that Anwar did not succeed him, it was something of a Pyrrhic victory. The episode exposed the deeply authoritarian nature of Dr. Mahathir's administration and the institutional rot that had set in during his long years at the helm. It also raised doubts about Dr. Mahathir's vaunted political judgment and renewed speculation about when, if ever, he intended to retire. Large numbers of Malaysians, especially Malays, remained alienated and looked upon Dr. Mahathir as an ogre. No matter how he tried, Dr. Mahathir could never bury the Anwar issue. Like a bad odour, it hung around as long as he stayed on, constantly testing his patience and permanently sullying his name.

  Dr. Mahathir's dismissal of Anwar ended a relationship that was long, complicated and, in part, personal as well as professional. Although born more than two decades apart, the men shared similarities in their ideas and political careers. They were commoners in contrast with former UMNO leaders who had aristocratic backgrounds, though Anwar's middle-class upbringing was more comfortable than Dr. Mahathir's. The son of a hospital orderly who became an UMNO member of parliament, with a mother who also was an active party member, Anwar completed secondary school as a boarder at the elite Malay College in Kuala Kangsar, the country's most prestigious school. He excelled at debating, led Islamic study groups and eventually was appointed school captain.[2]

  When they first met in the late 1960s, Anwar was a student leader at the University of Malaya and Dr. Mahathir was a first-term parliamentarian, both making a name for themselves as Malay nationalists. A skilful political strategist with clear views on what he wanted to achieve, Anwar — like Dr. Mahathir — had politics in his blood. In 1968, Anwar took over the two major Malay student organizations in the country, uniting the Malay nationalist and Islamic streams.[3] Under his direction, they addressed Malay backwardness in such areas as health, education and economics, while pressuring politicians to keep earlier promises to make Malay the sole national language. Anwar and other students would visit Dr. Mahathir at his residence in Kuala Lumpur, at his invitation, to discuss shared concerns.[4]

  The venue was significant. It was the home of Dr. Mahathir's close friend and fellow UMNO member of parliament, Tunku Abdullah Tuanku Abdul Rahman, with whom Alor Star-based Dr. Mahathir often stayed when Parliament was in session. Tunku Abdullah was President of the Malaysian Youth Council, an umbrella organization for all youth groups, which would later include Anwar's Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM). In 1972, Anwar would succeed Tunku Abdullah as head of the multiracial Malaysian Youth Council, a post usually reserved for a senior UMNO member, providing Anwar with the opportunity to work beyond the Malay community.

  Anwar and his followers admired the outspoken Dr. Mahathir, and they supported him when he lost his seat in the 1969 election and blamed Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman's allegedly pro-Chinese policies for the "May 13" tragedy that followed. A few of the students helped circulate copies of Dr. Mahathir's notorious letter condemning the Tunku before it was banned. They also distributed copies of the first two chapters of The Malay Dilemma, which Dr. Mahathir passed to Anwar, before the complete book was published and proscribed. The students staged anti-Tunku demonstrations and continued to provide Dr. Mahathir with a platform after he was expelled from UMNO.

  In the following decade, however, Dr. Mahathir and Anwar found themselves not only on opposite sides of the political fence, but in conflict. Readmitted to UMNO in 1972, re-elected to Parliament in 1974 and immediately appointed education minister, Dr. Mahathir took a hard line to quell academic and student protests. Dr. Mahathir strongly supported a government decision to arrest Anwar, then head of ABIM, without trial under the Internal Security Act, after he backed mass demonstrations to protest peasant suffering in Kedah in late 1974.[5]

  Undeterred by 22 months in detention, Anwar was still head of ABIM and leading a broad coalition of non-governmental organizations against a proposed piece of legislation that would have tightened government control of voluntary associations, including religious and student organizations, trade unions and professional and consumer groups, when Dr. Mahathir recruited him as a candidate in 1982. Although Dr. Mahathir claimed later that he took Anwar in only to prevent a mischief-maker from joining the Islamic opposition, Anwar undoubtedly had star quality. He was an instant vote-winner and reinforced the im
pression that the relatively new Mahathir government was dynamic and serious about responding to the Islamic resurgence.

  Toning down his radical rhetoric, Anwar became an obedient and "relatively quiet cog in the Mahathir administration machinery".[6] Mentor and protégé worked well together, with Anwar ready to do battle for some of Dr. Mahathir's favourite causes. As UMNO Youth leader, Anwar led the campaign to recover "Carcosa", the former home of British colonial rulers given to the British at independence, and articulately argued the case to reform the monarchy. Anwar was a member of the "AIDS" group — Anwar Ibrahim, Daim Zainuddin and Sanusi Junid — which provided crucial support for Dr. Mahathir against Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in the battle for control of UMNO in 1987.[7]

  In turn, Dr. Mahathir appointed Anwar to a succession of portfolios "tailor made to equip him to take over the top post".[8] After a year as a deputy minister attending mainly to Islamic affairs, Anwar was made minister for youth, culture and sports, going on to spend two years in the agriculture portfolio and five years in education before being named finance minister in 1991. His parallel rise through UMNO ranks was even more impressive. Narrowly capturing the UMNO Youth leadership only months after joining Dr. Mahathir in 1982, he was elected one of the party's three vice presidents six years later. In 1990, he secured the highest number of votes in the vice presidential contest, ranking him third in the party hierarchy, behind the president and deputy president.

  A charismatic speaker and engaging conversationalist, Anwar sought to allay fears that he was an Islamic extremist in order to expand his appeal beyond his Malay-Muslim constituency — "learning how to eat with chopsticks", as one Chinese executive put it.[9] While supporting Dr. Mahathir's agenda, he remained quietly on the sidelines as political and business scandals periodically engulfed the government, telling old friends that he was working from the inside to influence policy instead of confronting opponents as in the past. An "unremarkable initiator of change" who produced few tangible achievements he could claim as his own,[10] Anwar nevertheless collected the credit as the Malaysian economy boomed in the 1990s. He travelled widely as finance minister and acquired a considerable international reputation.

  Although Dr. Mahathir and Anwar both studied at local universities rather than overseas and experienced a period of political banishment, they were different in some obvious ways. Unlike Dr. Mahathir, who governed by the force of his will and professed no desire to be popular, Anwar's political style was "a canny mix of personal charm and cool pragmatism".[11] While Dr. Mahathir was practical, with little time for theory and fascinated by technological gadgets, Anwar had a more philosophical bent, equally at ease quoting the Qur'an to conservative villagers or citing Shakespeare to a more-Westernized audience.[12] Dr. Mahathir focused on economic growth, promoting his vision of a fully developed Malaysia by 2020 that bristled with skyscrapers, superhighways, bullet trains and other concrete symbols of modernity. Anwar talked more of poverty alleviation, low-cost housing and healthcare, and the hope that his generation would see greater liberty, less censorship and a flowering of civil society.

  Although these differences were "matters of nuance, not of fundamentals",[13] strains showed as pundits repeatedly returned to their favourite guessing game: Who would succeed Dr. Mahathir, and when? A hint of dissension came at the 1993 UMNO General Assembly, when Anwar challenged Ghafar Baba for the deputy presidency against Dr. Mahathir's wishes. Anwar mounted his assault from behind a series of denials that sought to conceal his elaborate preparations. While Dr. Mahathir eventually did support Anwar's bid, prompting Ghafar to quit as deputy premier and withdraw from the party contest rather than be humiliated in a ballot, the prime minister would have preferred to keep them both in place and onside.

  As political scientist John Funston commented, relations between Dr. Mahathir and Anwar could no longer be completely free of tension. Dr. Mahathir had to keep on demonstrating that he remained in control, or party members would conclude he no longer was. Anwar, on the other hand, had to show that he was ready to take over whenever required, or someone else would emerge to challenge his newly acquired position as the heir apparent.[14] The key question: In the absence of a timetable, would Anwar patiently wait his turn, or be pressured by supporters into risking his post by challenging Dr. Mahathir?

  Living in adjoining official residences in the fancy Damansara Heights section of Kuala Lumpur, Dr. Mahathir and Anwar and their families developed a comfortable personal friendship. Anwar had met his wife in 1980 when visiting Dr. Mahathir's sister-in-law in hospital, where she was being cared for by a recent Dublin medical school graduate named Wan Aziza Wan Ismail. Anwar and Wan Aziza married in 1981. As neighbours, Dr. Mahathir and Anwar went horse-riding together on Sundays, until Anwar broke his collarbone in a fall and gave it up. Their daughters were good friends and studied together in Assunta Secondary School in Petaling Jaya, sometimes riding in each other's car if one driver was late.[15] Anwar described Dr. Mahathir as his "mentor, leader and father in politics".[16]

  After the government increased its majority in a general election in 1995, UMNO was riven by proxy battles between the leader and his deputy, which had the overall effect of weakening Dr. Mahathir's grip on the party.[17] As usual, the intense jockeying was conducted as political wayang kulit, shadow play, behind a veneer of normality and professions of loyalty and denials of rifts that fooled nobody. At the 1995 UMNO General Assembly, Dr. Mahathir said he would retire "soon" and reaffirmed that Anwar was his natural successor. Anwar declared that his loyalty to the president should not be questioned and said anyone proposing him as a candidate for the leadership would be wasting their time. Dr. Mahathir's supporters, though, took out a little insurance. They persuaded the assembly to adopt a resolution saying there should be no contest for the positions of president and deputy president in 1996, when the party's triennial elections were due.

  Despite that apparent obstacle, some observers and participants thought Anwar's spreading influence might be sufficient for him to be tempted to try and nudge aside "the old man" at the UMNO General Assembly in October 1996. Dr. Mahathir, however, moved first. In the early part of 1996, he had the party's Supreme Council, which he chaired, pass three new rulings. Reinforcing the previous year's resolution, the Supreme Council directed that party divisions, which propose candidates for elections at the assembly, could nominate only Dr. Mahathir for president and Anwar for deputy. Further, all candidates for senior positions must register with UMNO headquarters five months in advance, a requirement that would not allow a challenger to hide his intentions as Anwar had in 1993 against Ghafar. Finally, the Supreme Council pushed through an unprecedented rule that banned all campaigning for the October party elections. While the restrictions were introduced in the name of noble causes — less politicking, more unity, a level playing field and reduced vote buying — they effectively entrenched Dr. Mahathir's presidency until 1999.

  At the General Assembly, Anwar's faction showed its muscle early when Ahmad Zahid Hamidi defeated incumbent Rahim Tamby Chik for the leadership of UMNO Youth and Siti Zaharah Sulaiman took control of the women's wing from Rafidah Aziz. But while Dr. Mahathir endorsed candidates lost that round, they dominated the Supreme Council poll, and Anwar's allies failed to make inroads at vice presidential level. If Anwar's followers tried to create the impression that time was running out for Dr. Mahathir, he saw no reason to be rushed into retirement. A buoyant Dr. Mahathir subsequently declared he would not set a date for his departure. "The moment you give a timetable, you are a lame duck," he said. He added, "I can go anytime now or ten years later or whatever. Depends on what the situation is like." As for naming a successor, "Whoever is in place as my deputy will succeed me."[18]

  With both men making light of speculation about their differences as they entered 1997, Anwar got a taste of the top job when Dr. Mahathir took two months leave in May. For the first time since the 1980s, Dr. Mahathir made his deputy acting prime minister, an indication of his confid
ence in Anwar and something of a trial run. As Dr. Mahathir joked when asked if it were to test whether Anwar was capable of succeeding him, "Yes, he has to sit for an examination. When I come back, I will make him sit down and answer questions. I will then mark the paper."[19] On his return in July, Dr. Mahathir declared himself satisfied with Anwar's management of the country.

  But Acting Prime Minister Anwar's actions, specifically his declared war on corruption, alarmed sections of UMNO and the business community, and they joined Anwar's rivals in committing themselves to blocking his ascent.[20] The Anwar sponsored Anti-Corruption Bill 1997 increased penalties, enhanced the powers of the Anti-Corruption Agency and contained provisions allowing for the prosecution of a public official even after leaving office. Anwar won Cabinet acceptance of the proposed legislation over the objections of some ministerial colleagues. It was clear not only to Anwar's political adversaries, but also to some of Malaysia's well-connected corporate players, that he could not be relied upon to protect their interests if he became prime minister.[21]

  In August 1997, a month before the annual UMNO General Assembly, Anwar's enemies struck, circulating surat layang aimed at his high moral character. While a common way to denigrate lofty aspirants in Malay politics, this onslaught of poison-pen letters came in more than half a dozen versions in what Anwar called the "most concerted, well organized and well orchestrated" effort to sabotage him politically. The letters alleged he had an affair with the wife of his private secretary and fathered her child, and also had a homosexual relationship with his former family chauffeur.

  As some of the letters were sent to the prime minister and signed by their authors, they could be easily investigated by police, who were answerable to Dr. Mahathir as home affairs minister. After Anwar lodged a complaint with the police and they conducted inquiries, Dr. Mahathir told a press conference the allegations were "absurd" and just the usual slander to prevent Anwar's succession. "It is totally political. There is no truth in it," he said. Dr. Mahathir gave an example of the way the campaign to blacken Anwar was organized, with one person signing a letter dictated by another. "The letter was written in a language beyond the capacity of one of the writers," he said.[22]