Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Page 48
Equally audacious was Dr. Mahathir's persistent targeting of Abdullah's businessman son Kamaluddin, and aspiring politician son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin, both in their 30s, suggesting vast influence peddling. Oxford-educated Khairy, deputy leader of UMNO Youth, had worked as an adviser to the prime minister, but left to join an investment bank in which he bought a 3 per cent share. Dr. Mahathir said Kamaluddin's Scomi had RM1 billion of contracts with state companies, while Khairy, with no official position, had to approve all business proposals submitted to the government. Abdullah, Dr. Mahathir declared, would "pay the price" for turning the country into a "family business".[55] His accusations forced Abdullah to go on television to deflect charges of corruption and nepotism, an awkward position for Mr. Clean. Abdullah also said, "The projects awarded to Dr. Mahathir's children were far bigger than what Scomi received", a disagreeable comment for Mr. Nice.[56] Khairy sold his RM9.2 million bank stake, after associates felt compelled to explain how they financed him into it in the first place.
While Dr. Mahathir's barbs found their targets, by doing so he re-activated the controversy that swirled around his own family's commercial operations when he was in office. It was the corporate activities of three sons, Mirzan, Mokhzani and Mukhriz, that prompted critics to compare his administration with Suharto's corrupt regime in Indonesia. Without even acknowledging the most blatant example of favouritism, the RM1.7 billion bailout of Mirzan Mahathir's shipping interests in 1998, Dr. Mahathir moralized on the evils of corruption, cronyism and nepotism. As "a matter of a principle," he said — obviously in complete denial — he had not allowed his children or wife to do business with the government when he was prime minister.[57]
Dr. Mahathir was indignant that his critical comments were not being adequately reported in Malaysia. "Where is the press freedom?," he asked with a completely straight face in 2006.[58] The state of the press was about where he had left it three years earlier, firmly in the hands of the UMNO leader's political and corporate allies, who were reluctant to give a voice to critics inside or outside of the party. The reason "I am talking to myself", as Dr. Mahathir remarked, was due to the system of government ownership and control of the media he had imposed and consolidated over the years. Dr. Mahathir was merely getting a taste of his own medicine when he was blacked out, or severely restricted, in Malaysia's mainstream media.
Dr. Mahathir courted ridicule by insisting, "During my time, the press was quite free."[59] In fact, to enforce his rule, he had sacked editors for not toeing his line and tightened restrictions on a press that historically was required to partner the government in the country's development. He twice toughened the Printing Presses and Publications Act, allowing the home affairs minister unfettered powers to control the press. He also amended the Official Secrets Act to permit almost any document to be classified "secret", and to require offenders convicted of disclosing the contents to spend at least a year in jail. With printing companies obliged to obtain a licence annually, many who had invested in expensive machinery refused to handle alternative publications offering incisive commentaries and critical perspectives.[60] For instance, the printer of five years of Aliran Monthly, published by the Penang-based public interest group Aliran, abruptly withdrew its services in early 1999. Over the next seven months, four other printers terminated their relationships with Aliran, amid reports of government intimidation.[61]
Apart from temporarily suspending the publishing permits of three leading newspapers in 1988, Dr. Mahathir's administration had closed permanently three Malay-language publications — the magazines, Detik and al-Wasilah and the tabloid Eksklusif — whose popularity soared after Anwar Ibrahim's dismissal in 1998. The government's abuse of prominent dailies to discredit Anwar saw their circulation and revenue drop significantly, as readers went on strike against biased and distasteful reporting. TV3 suffered the same fate. In contrast, sales of Harakah, a biweekly owned by PAS that closely tracked Anwar's fall, quadrupled to more than 300,000. To curb the paper's growth, the government reduced its frequency from twice a week to twice a month and enforced the terms of its licence, which allowed it to sell only to party members.[62] The paper's editor was convicted on a charge of sedition. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists put Dr. Mahathir on its list of the Ten Worst Enemies of the Press in 1999, citing his stranglehold on the mainstream media and efforts to stifle the handful of opposition organs allowed to publish.[63]
The foreign press fared little better. In 1985, a correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review, a New Zealand national, became the first journalist ever to be prosecuted in Malaysia under the Official Secrets Act. Within a month, a Malaysian reporter was arrested on a similar charge.[64] The following year, the government expelled two Kuala Lumpur-based correspondents of the Asian Wall Street Journal and banned the paper for three months, but relented after a court ruled against the expulsions. Distribution of the Review, Journal, Newsweek, Time and the Economist was sometimes delayed, or blocked altogether, by ministerial edict. Malaysia in 1999 became the first Commonwealth country in 50 years to jail a reporter for contempt of court: Murray Hiebert, a Canadian on the Review's staff in Kuala Lumpur, served four weeks of a six-week prison sentence for an article he wrote about a local lawsuit.
In an attempt to skirt the onerous licensing laws, two young Malaysian journalists in 1999 had started the country's first online daily newspaper, Malaysiakini. Their gamble: To promote his Multimedia Super Corridor in 1997, Dr. Mahathir had promised foreign information and communications technology investors he would not censor the Internet, a decision he later regretted. Nevertheless, the government sought to impede the venture by resorting to back-door methods, such as barring Malaysiakini reporters from official functions, press conferences and other events.[65] A police raid on the paper's offices in 2003, after a complaint by UMNO's youth wing that a reader's letter was seditious, made a mockery of Dr. Mahathir's promise. But the paper was back online less than half a day later, its confiscated computers and servers replaced with makeshift and publicly donated equipment, and its reputation enhanced. Malaysiakini won the International Press Institute's 2001 Freedom Award for its independent coverage of Malaysia's political scene.
Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Dr. Mahathir turned in his hour of need to Malaysiakini whose staff he had once labelled "traitors". He began the first of what became periodic interviews with the comment, "I never liked Malaysiakini.com. It was very critical of me before."[66] After that, he made extensive use of cyberspace, including news websites and popular blogs, before starting his own blog — www.chedet.com — to get his anti-administration message across.[67] VCDs of several of his talks were sold at roadside stalls.
Improbably, as even the opposition conceded "a greater sense of freedom and openness" after Dr. Mahathir stepped down,[68] he contended that Abdullah's Malaysia had become a "police state".[69] In an open letter to Malaysians, the former prime minister said anyone attempting to organize an anti-Abdullah function would be hassled and forced to cancel it. Actions or threats to deter them, he said, included sacking, transfer to remote areas such as Sabah, cancellation of contracts, harassment by the banks, summons by the police or the Anti-Corruption Agency, detention and repeated interrogation. "A climate of fear has enveloped this country," he said.[70] In truth, Malaysia was never more than a quasi-democracy, and Dr. Mahathir had done almost nothing to encourage it to mature into the real thing. As he concentrated power in his office, he had no qualms about stripping away the democratic trappings and baring his authoritarian claws. Nothing, before or since, had created a climate of fear like Operation Lalang in 1987, with the roundup of 119 politicians, intellectuals and activists.
While Dr. Mahathir insisted that only issues divided him and Abdullah, he made the dispute personal, branding Abdullah a liar, deceitful and shameless.[71] Privately, with close friends, Dr. Mahathir used even stronger language, calling Abdullah a "hypocrite" and a "great pretender", pretending to be cleaner and more modest than his predecesso
r.[72] Dr. Mahathir's sheer nastiness made relations between their families awkward. Caught in the crossfire was Mokhzani, Dr. Mahathir's second son, who recalled that Abdullah had helped him get together with Mastisa Hani Mohamed Abid, whom Mokhzani married.[73] Despite what Abdullah called Dr. Mahathir's "stronger doses of venom", the prime minister remained on warm terms with Dr. Mahathir's wife, Dr. Siti Hasmah. Abdullah's wife invited Dr. Siti Hasmah to her old Putrajaya home, the official residence, even as the war of words turned ugly. Dr. Siti Hasmah accepted, keen to see what changes had been made by the new occupants, and delighted to accept a ride with Abdullah around the premises.[74]
Although he helped shaped the perception of Abdullah as an indecisive leader who relied heavily on a group of young advisers led by his son and son-in-law, Dr. Mahathir paid a price for his remorseless, scatter-gun offensive. While he retained a public following, elite political opinion turned against him when it became obvious that he was obsessed with ousting Abdullah, whatever the cost to UMNO and stability.[75] A brokered meeting with Abdullah in late 2006, billed as "peace talks", was pivotal. Apart from insisting on recording the private, two-hour discussion — mostly a stream of complaints by Dr. Mahathir — he resumed his onslaught the following day, before Abdullah had time to respond.[76]
The harder Dr. Mahathir pressed, the more his stature was diminished. He was hit in the face with pepper spray while attending a rally in Kelantan. The ultimate indignity was his attempt to persuade his old UMNO division, Kubang Pasu in Kedah, to elect him as one of seven delegates to the party's General Assembly in 2006. Although his name was first on the ballot paper, he came ninth out of 15 contestants — in the division he had headed for nearly 30 years. While Abdullah's followers, fearing Dr. Mahathir would try to instigate a revolt against Abdullah at the assembly, undoubtedly blocked his election, Dr. Mahathir compounded his humiliation by alleging vote-buying. "I know that bribery happens in any politics, but I did not think that the ruling party itself used money politics," he said, choosing to forget that the rampant use of cold hard cash had become common in his time and reduced him to tears.[77]
Dr. Mahathir's hectic schedule, including interviews, speeches and overseas travel, as well as opening a "concept bakery and bistro" with a Japanese partner, trying to criminalize war and convening a meeting in an attempt to solve the Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand, took a toll on his health. Despite his relatively youthful and extremely healthy appearance, doctors detected blockages in his arteries and warned him to slow down. After three minor heart attacks in under a year, Dr. Mahathir, 82, elected to have a five-and-a-half hour heart bypass operation in 2007, the second in 18 years. A resulting chest infection required him to undergo another three hours of traumatic surgery within three weeks. Malaysians tracked his recovery through daughter Marina's blog, updated twice daily. A week after the infected tissue was removed, she reported her father's moods were like the seven dwarfs: "grouchy, grumpy, whiny, snarly, whateverly, smirky and sometimes, sometimes smiley".[78]
While Abdullah no doubt enjoyed the periodic silence that hospitalization imposed on Dr. Mahathir, it did little to help the prime minister's political fortunes. Having promised so much so early, Abdullah was excoriated for failing to deliver on almost all fronts. After encountering resistance at UMNO's annual meeting in 2004, he ran out of what reformist zeal he genuinely harboured and allowed himself to be carried along by stronger party currents. His laid-back style, initially seen as endearing, became a liability and he was portrayed by opponents as listless, even lazy. Abdullah told one interviewer he was "not losing any sleep over" Dr. Mahathir's comments.[79] He was not losing sleep over much at all, according to anti-government websites, which circulated photos of him dozing through cabinet meetings and political gatherings.[80]
As Malaysia's ranking in Transparency International's corruption index slipped to 44 in 2006 from 37 in 2003,[81] Abdullah's lack of political will to tackle the entrenched system of "money politics" and abuse of power played out publicly over the case of Zakaria Mat Deros, the little known UMNO divisional chief in Klang. A one-time railway gatekeeper and office boy, Zakaria, 60, was the classic UMNO warlord, dispensing patronage and delivering votes. He attracted national attention by building an RM8 million mansion in a working-class neighbourhood, without obtaining planning approval and on land originally meant for low-cost housing.[82] With Malaysians flocking to Klang to gawk at the almost-completed palace, which would not have looked out of place in Hollywood or Beverley Hills, Abdullah emerged from an UMNO Supreme Council meeting to slap Zakaria on the wrist: He should quit as a municipal councilor, Abdullah said, but he could continue as a state legislator and UMNO divisional chief as his wrongdoing was not a party matter.[83]
A financial scandal over plans to establish a free-trade zone at Port Klang, the country's main port, also indicated that nothing much had changed in the way of large infrastructure projects.[84] Only after press reports that the state-owned Port Klang Authority had been saddled with huge losses did the government acknowledge a multi-billion ringgit bailout, in the form of a soft loan.[85]
With the royal commission into the police force, which delivered a 634-page report in mid-2005, Abdullah had a chance to make amends. It recommended sweeping reforms to fight corruption, with the establishment of a permanent, independent body to initiate and conduct investigations into graft and other abuses. But when the proposal for an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission was resisted by police, Abdullah prevaricated, and what remained of his anti-corruption drive disintegrated.
In a moment of irritation with his predecessor, Abdullah admitted that public confidence in the judiciary was low, but said that "this didn't happen during my time", alluding to events in 1988, when Dr. Mahathir intervened and brought the judiciary to heel.[86] Yet even when Anwar Ibrahim released a videotaped recording in 2007 showing a local lawyer, V.K. Lingam, boasting about his ability to broker judicial appointments, the government was reluctant to revisit the episode. After a protest march by lawyers, Abdullah appointed a toothless three-member panel to probe the authenticity of the videotape. With Anwar cleverly ratcheting up the pressure by periodically releasing more clips from the same videotape, Abdullah bowed to public demands in late 2007 for a full-blown royal commission. Its hearings in early 2008 proved sensational — Dr. Mahathir, his tycoon friend Vincent Tan, Lingam, two retired chief justices and a former minister all gave evidence — with a fuzzy picture emerging of a subverted judiciary. Dr. Mahathir's memory, usually as sharp as his tongue, let him down under oath: He said "I can't remember" or its equivalent 14 times during his 90-minute testimony, prompting opposition leader Lim Kit Siang to accuse him of "selective amnesia".[87]
More worrying for Abdullah was a deteriorating social climate in which the Indians and Chinese believed they were being denied political, religious and economic space. As positions polarized, some Malays also felt their rights were being challenged. The minorities were disturbed by what they regarded as creeping Islamization and by periodic displays of ketuanan Melayu, Malay supremacy, while the New Economic Policy was extended so reflexively that it was dubbed the "never ending policy". Extremists gained the upper hand as Abdullah proved ineffective in stemming an "increasingly intolerant" and "growing tide of Malay-Muslim communitarianism".[88]
With Abdullah's Islam Hadhari exposed as a political slogan to regain Malay votes rather than a new marker for social harmony,[89] an estimated 20,000 Indians poured onto the streets of the capital in November 2007. Led by the Hindu Rights Action Force, they defied a ban on the rally, pre-emptive arrests and police use of water canons, tear gas and baton charges to disperse them. At least 88 demonstrators were arrested, with five leaders later being detained without trial under the Internal Security Act for allegedly making inflammatory remarks. The government's heavy-handed response, consistent with its intolerant attitude to other peaceful protests, dramatically reversed sentiment in the Indian community, which had long been quiescen
t and pro-government.[90]
A memorable headline on an editorial by Steven Gan, editor-in-chief of Malaysiakini, summed up the popular reinterpretation of Abdullah near the end of his first term: "An incompetent, not-so-nice guy".[91] Yet almost nobody forecast the "political tsunami", as it was dubbed, that struck the government in a general election Abdullah called on 8 March 2008.
The National Front lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament for the first time and conceded control of five of the country's 13 states. The government won 140 seats in the new 222-seat Parliament against 199 in the outgoing 219-seat Parliament. A loose alliance of Parti Keadilan Rakyat, led by Anwar Ibrahim's wife, PAS and the Democratic Action Party, won 82 seats compared with 20 previously. They later formed a coalition called the People's Front, raising the prospect that Malaysia might develop a viable two-party political system. A vital factor was the charismatic Anwar, whose formidable organizational skills brought the parties together despite their misgivings about each other. While the timing of the election prevented Anwar from standing as a candidate by a few weeks, his unmatched oratory harnessed dissatisfaction in all ethnic communities and persuaded significant numbers to vote opposition regardless of race and religion.
The shocking results turned Malaysian political life upside down, creating uncertainty at state and federal level, in the ranks of the National Front and within each of its decimated component parties. It raised the possibility, previously almost unthinkable, that the UMNO-led government, in place for half a century, might lose office. As the People's Front took over state administrations in Penang, Perak, Trengganu and Selangor, joining Kelantan, already in opposition hands, Anwar reinforced National Front anxiety by engaging in psychological warfare. He predicted he would replace the central government within months by enticing at least 30 defectors, especially legislators from neglected Sabah, to join his People's Front and give it a majority in Parliament. The outcome also raised hopes that the era of race-based politics might be ending. Anwar had campaigned for a Malaysian Economic Agenda to replace the New Economic Policy and provide help to all needy Malaysians rather than bumiputras alone.