Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Read online

  While Dr. Mahathir did not invent the informal system of checks and balances to restrain rivals and remind others they were in constant competition for the prime minister's favour, he embraced it with a Machiavellian touch. One technique he copied from predecessors was to ensure that in the politically more important Malaysian states a particularly powerful UMNO figure was offset by another prominent politician.[38] The chief minister, for example, often had to look over his shoulder at the head of an UMNO state liaison committee or a cabinet minister.

  Dr. Mahathir used the 1982 general election, called more than a year before it was due, to promote a new generation of Malay leaders, who would start to balance some of the old-line, entrenched politicians. Almost half of the existing members of parliament and state assemblies, among them three ministers, were dropped in favour of fresh candidates, younger and better educated, who might share Dr. Mahathir's outlook.[39] In a campaign that lacked compelling issues, it became a referendum on his first nine months in office, characterized by vigorous attempts to shake up the bureaucracy, denunciations of corruption and promises to push ahead with heavy industrial and infrastructure projects despite a slowing economy.

  Dr. Mahathir personally co-opted star candidate Anwar Ibrahim, the charismatic president of the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement and a fierce government critic, who had positioned the movement as independent of both UMNO and the opposition Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS). After Anwar easily captured a PAS constituency and took his place in Parliament, Dr. Mahathir immediately made him a deputy minister, promoting him to a full minister the following year. Attending his first UMNO General Assembly in 1982, Anwar aggressively contested the leadership of the party's youth wing as Dr. Mahathir's man, defeating the stodgy incumbent, who was also a deputy minister. As head of UMNO Youth, Anwar automatically became an ex-officio vice president — all within a year or so of joining the party. His rapid ascent was resented by younger aspirants who had toiled long and loyally for UMNO, only to find their further advancement blocked by a man who spent those years denouncing the party. His arrival also spelled more uncertainty for Musa and Tengku Razaleigh over their leadership ambitions.

  With Dr. Mahathir at the helm for the first time, the 11-party National Front took all 13 states in the election. It won 132 of the 154 seats in Parliament compared with 131 in 1978, and it could count on backing from five nominally independents in Sabah. Peninsular Malaysia delivered an even broader mandate for Dr. Mahathir, with the pattern of voting showing he had overcome his reputation as a Malay extremist and won the trust of Chinese Malaysians.

  Within UMNO, however, unhappiness over the way Dr. Mahathir was handling the party boiled over at the 1983 General Assembly, after he declared his faith in Musa a year ahead of party elections. Dr. Mahathir's explanation that he spoke not so much to support Musa as to squash malicious rumours that they were drifting apart politically, which hampered the administration of the country, was rejected by many of the more tradition-minded delegates. They said a how-to-vote directive from the president violated convention and opened the way to dictatorial action in future.[40]

  While Dr. Mahathir's political acumen kept him in power, his actions in fending off rivals and encouraging them to fight among themselves contributed to unprecedented open factionalism in UMNO. As he gradually strengthened his position, opposing factions also became better organized and more defined. UMNO's direct and deepening involvement in business with the implementation of the New Economic Policy raised the economic stakes and sharpened competition for government contracts, privatization awards and other benefits.

  Musa Hitam's abrupt resignation as deputy premier and home affairs minister in early 1986 opened more fissures within UMNO, and confirmed three years of rumours of trouble inside what was dubbed the 2-M administration. Dr. Mahathir had never liked the label, bestowed by the local press, grumbling that it should have been understood to mean Mahathir Mohamad rather than Mahathir-Musa. Sure enough, when the breach came, at the heart of the friction was Dr. Mahathir's conviction that Musa saw himself as nearly equal and wanted his job prematurely.

  Admittedly, the two had sharply contrasting political styles. While Dr. Mahathir was assertive and brooked little criticism, Musa tended to be more personable and moderate. And they differed sometimes over policies, with Musa decidedly unenthusiastic about some of Dr. Mahathir's plans for heavy industry. But it was Dr. Mahathir's belief that Musa was disloyal and trying to topple him from the premier's perch that caused the breach. "Your accusations toward me are a terrible blow to my dignity and credibility," Musa wrote in a seven-page resignation letter that was reported by the foreign press but not by domestic news outlets.

  For a replacement deputy premier, Dr. Mahathir turned to Ghafar Baba, the wealthy businessman who had quit Hussein Onn's Cabinet ten years earlier in protest at Dr. Mahathir's selection for the same post. He was a sound bet for Dr. Mahathir, who had his eye on UMNO's next triennial election. Experienced in government, Ghafar had been a vice president since 1962, proving his consistent party appeal. At 61 and dependent on the government for business, he was unlikely to risk it all for a shot at the prime minister's office. Even at this stage, 60-year-old Dr. Mahathir's choice to succeed him — eventually — was Anwar Ibrahim, but he was not about to let Anwar, 38, get too near too soon.

  As the Malaysian economy began to contract and patronage available to keep followers on board dwindled, even deeper factional alignments coalesced around Musa and Tengku Razaleigh. Sharing a common desire to curb Dr. Mahathir's growing strength, they joined forces to oust him. As the 1987 UMNO General Assembly approached, it was decided that Tengku Razaleigh would oppose Dr. Mahathir while Musa would defend his deputy president's position against Ghafar. The clash between the two sides, dubbed Team A and Team B by the Malaysian press, compelled almost all aspirants for party posts to declare their allegiance openly.

  Dr. Mahathir used a general election in August 1986, which he called a year before his five-year term expired, to narrow subtly the options open to Tengku Razaleigh and Musa. While the election was little more than a sideshow, Dr. Mahathir risked weakening his hold on the UMNO presidency if the National Front polled poorly. At the same time, he left his UMNO rivals no choice but to close ranks and campaign against the opposition on some of the same issues they sought to use against him in the intra-party feud. Despite a sagging economy, disunity in the Malaysian Chinese Association as well as UMNO, and scandals over state-owned Bank Bumiputra and Malaysia's attempts to rig the international tin price, the government won easily. The National Front took 148 seats in an expanded 177-seat Parliament, and retained control of all states. And while the Malaysian Chinese Association paid a heavy price for its internal bickering, UMNO performed exceptionally well. Completing a minor cabinet reorganization he began three months earlier when naming Ghafar deputy premier, Dr. Mahathir moved his people into more strategic positions and demoted some of Musa's allies.

  With the battle lines drawn publicly in early 1987, the contest for UMNO represented a radical departure in Malay politics, which traditionally eschewed confrontation and made a virtue of unity, consensus and loyalty to leaders. Team A enjoyed many of the benefits of incumbency that the National Front took for granted in a general election. The press gave members more favourable coverage, the police cooperated in issuing permits for meetings, and the tax authorities harassed some Team B supporters. Team A was able to draw on UMNO assets and generate additional funds by allocating government contracts.

  Dr. Mahathir lined up pledges of support from leaders of the other National Front component parties and from state chief ministers. But five cabinet ministers and four deputy ministers defected. Team B also received both a moral and a morale boost from the support of the country's two surviving former prime ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Hussein Onn. Hussein told close friends he had made a colossal mistake in selecting Dr. Mahathir as his deputy. "The fellow was behaving himself at the time," Hussein confided to one intim
ate. "I didn't know he was going to turn out like this."[41] As for the normally genial Tunku, he volunteered his distaste for Dr. Mahathir, repeatedly calling him "scum" in private conversations.[42]

  Team B members made much of Dr. Mahathir's pursuit of showcase projects in heavy industry and public works, claiming they were poorly conceived and would be a long-term drain on the state. They also alleged mismanagement, corruption and cronyism, pointing to huge losses at Bank Bumiputra and in the prime minister's secret intervention in the world tin market. They further claimed a few of his friends were benefiting disproportionately from state munificence, identifying Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin as the principal offender in mixing private business with public office.

  Characteristically, Dr. Mahathir sought to cultivate among UMNO delegates the fear that a vote against Team A would usher in a period of uncertainty in which the most unlikely or outrageous turn of events — in brief, instability — was possible. He said that if Ghafar lost to Musa for the deputy presidency, Ghafar would stay as his deputy premier. He also said that technically he could remain prime minister if he lost the presidency, and that only a vote of no-confidence in Parliament would remove him. Malaysia's Constitution was silent on both points. Since Dr. Mahathir was unpredictable and was acquiring a reputation for making his own rules, nobody could be sure how he would react if the vote went against him. His own supporters were apprehensive. As one of them said, Dr. Mahathir "has been flouting the laws of the tribe. He's been acting un-Malay by saying he might not accept the wishes of the party."[43]

  The 1,479 delegates who voted secretly at the UMNO General Assembly on 24 April 1987 returned Team A with the slimmest of margins. Dr. Mahathir defeated Tengku Razaleigh 761-718, a majority of just 43. Ghafar beat Musa 739-699, a majority of 40, with 41 spoiled ballots that observers assumed was the work of Tengku Razaleigh diehards taking revenge on Musa. Defence Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi captured Team B's only vice presidency, scoring second in the vote, while fellow team members filled eight of 25 elective positions on the Supreme Council. Dr. Mahathir might have won, but his legitimacy as a leader of UMNO and Malaysia had been dented.[44]

  With a bare 51.45 per cent of UMNO behind him, Dr. Mahathir faced a formidable task if he chose the customary route and tried to rebuild party unity. In the new political environment, open dissent in UMNO was a reality and a challenge to the leadership was no longer considered taboo. Tengku Razaleigh, 50, confident that he and 52-year-old Musa commanded almost half the party, said he was willing to assist in healing the rift, "provided the hand of cooperation is extended". Otherwise, he indicated, they would repeat their leadership bid in 1990. "We have the bases — Musa's base, my base," he said. "It's still there. It will be there in three years."

  Back in 1981 when he became president, Dr. Mahathir had appealed for unity after the first bruising Tengku Razaleigh-Musa encounter, urging the party faithful to forget the harsh exchanges from the heat of battle and accept the outcome in a democratic spirit. "There are no winners or losers in an UMNO contest," he told the General Assembly. Having repulsed the combined might of Tengku Razaleigh and Musa in 1987, however, Dr. Mahathir ignored his own advice. He decided to eliminate rather than accommodate his rivals, dropping from the Cabinet Team B's nine ministers and deputies. In sacking Abdullah Badawi, Dr. Mahathir trashed the tradition that senior positions in Cabinet should go to those who performed strongly in UMNO elections.

  Dr. Mahathir's purge also found victims in the civil service and corporate ranks, extending his tough new line of direct domination of UMNO to critical points in society. Later in the year, Dr. Mahathir used racial tensions as a screen to jail a wide spectrum of government critics. He also encouraged a court to declare UMNO an illegal organization so he could form a new party that would assume UMNO's identity without the presence of the dissidents. In the process, he undermined the judiciary, a move that would plague the Malaysian justice system for decades. All the steps were interlocked, part of a strategy to eliminate sources of resistance and give Dr. Mahathir unfettered control of the country.

  Even after Dr. Mahathir sacked his ministerial foes and decided to play hardball, his grip on the party and country was far from assured. As he waited for the High Court to hear a suit filed by 11 Tengku Razaleigh supporters seeking to invalidate the UMNO General Assembly leadership vote, a second year of recession meant more bankruptcies, worsening unemployment and further belt-tightening all round. Predictably, relations between Malaysia's main ethnic groups began to fray as insecurity took hold and politicians looked for scapegoats.

  With the competing UMNO camps continuing to clash at all levels, threatening the coherence of the party, some leaders resorted to naked communal politics. Portraying themselves as champions of the Malays inevitably meant encroaching on Chinese emotional territory. For their own reasons, the Chinese political parties also adopted sharpening communal attitudes. Trying to recover ground lost in the previous year's general election, the Malaysian Chinese Association was under pressure to reassert itself as the community's representative in the government. Determined to protect its electoral gains, the opposition predominantly Chinese Democratic Action Party was not about to give an inch. Several issues connected with the emotive subjects of language and education, which reopened a sensitive debate over the contents of Malaysian culture, drew in the Indians as well.

  After the Malaysian Chinese Association and Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, another predominantly Chinese party in the National Front, joined the Democratic Action Party in a protest over the appointment of non-Mandarin speaking teachers as administrators in Chinese primary schools, UMNO Youth seized the chance to organize the Malays in response. Acting leader Mohamed Najib Razak, keen to claim permanent leadership of the youth movement, led a huge rally in October near where the 1969 strife erupted. Demonstrators carried provocative banners and posters bearing anti-Chinese slogans. The following day an army deserter, Adam ]aafar, went on a shooting rampage nearby, killing one person and wounding others, reviving memories of the racial riots 18 years earlier. Although unrelated to political events, the incident caused panic, with shops closing early and people rushing to stock food.

  When Dr. Mahathir returned from abroad a few days later, UMNO leaders were making preparations for an even bigger rally in Kuala Lumpur to demonstrate Malay resolve and unity, hoping to attract 500,000 people. He called it off and ordered the biggest crackdown on political dissent Malaysia had ever seen. Between October and December, police arrested 119 people, 106 of them in the first three weeks, in what was called Operation Lalang. Lalang is Malay for useless grass, suggesting the prime minister was "weeding out" his critics. They were held under the feared Internal Security Act (ISA), which permits indefinite detention without trial. Three newspapers were closed.

  The round-up profoundly shocked the nation because Dr. Mahathir had cultivated a favourable image over the ISA, encouraging the hope that it might lapse into disuse eventually. In his first six years as premier, hundreds of people held without trial had been released, leaving only suspected hard-core subversives still in jail. Moreover, Dr. Mahathir told lawyers how he had feared arrest under the ISA after being expelled from UMNO in 1969.[45] And, as deputy premier, he had narrowly escaped being implicated in UMNO factional fighting that saw innocent allies incarcerated.

  Dr. Mahathir, however, maintained that the 119 detainees were fanning the flames of racial unrest and religious zealotry. "Preventive action must be taken now to save the country from disastrous riots," he told Parliament.[46] Residents of the capital undoubtedly were relieved that the situation had been defused, though they noted that UMNO was a major contributor to escalating tensions and that the government waited far too long before clamping down. While no doubt some of the participants in the ugly communal debates were behind bars, none of the high-profile UMNO organizers and instigators, most conspicuously Najib, had been arrested.

  In fact, most of the detainees had no connection with recent develop
ments in Kuala Lumpur. A more common feature was that they had opposed government policies or offended the UMNO leadership's sensibilities. Many were prominent academics and activists who worked for non-governmental organizations that were concerned with issues of importance to all ethnic communities. While they sometimes highlighted corruption and misuse of government power, they were usually considered no more than irritants. But with UMNO divided, they were providing ammunition for Dr. Mahathir's factional rivals.[47]

  Chandra Muzaffar, 40, a political scientist who founded and led the multiracial reform movement Aliran — small but influential and based in Penang — was probably the most successful in stirring broader awareness and scrutiny of public affairs. Chandra's detention was brutally ironic since he actually had rebuked both government and opposition politicians, in a letter to a local paper, for playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship over race. Another detainee, Chee Heng Leng, 32, was a university lecturer and member of the Institute of Social Analysis, a social-reformist organization. Chee, who obtained a master's degree from Harvard University's School of Public Health, had been completing her doctoral thesis on health problems among Malaysia's poor. Others included Meenakshi Raman, 29, a legal adviser to the Consumers Association of Penang, who worked on behalf of squatter farmers being evicted by a developer; Harrison Ngau, 29, the representative of a local affiliate of the international environmental outfit Friends of the Earth, who led the Penan tribe in anti-logging protests in Sarawak; and Tan Ka Kheng, 35, a university lecturer and member of the Environmental Protection Society of Malaysia, who was an ardent critic of a radioactive waste dump in Perak state.