TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
An honest portrayal of Mahathir Mohamad
This book is well written in many senses
Change Size
T
his book is well written in many senses. First, it reads like a thriller, especially for somebody who has followed Malaysia's development since the end of confrontation in 1966, although not as intensive as this commentator wishes. One just cannot stop reading the book until the end.
Second, it is balanced and honest, and this is significant as the person being covered is flamboyant, capricious, vindictive and above all egocentric. Barry Wain was able to give a balanced view of the many aspects of the person he studied, including the negative ones, and this is certainly not an easy task. Either one is fed with the negative sides of the person or one is enticed by his many achievements. Instead, Wain has been honest in portraying his main character. And since former PM Mahathir has been so obsessed about his vision of Malaysia, he is not a person who accepts criticism of those ideas or their implementation, or of his personality. Wain is brave to be willing to stick his neck out and be credible in what he has to say about Mahathir.
Third is the hard work that Barry has undertaken, as demonstrated by his extensive and intensive notes and interviews. That is the only way to make the story credible and balanced.
In the end what emerges is a story about former PM Mahathir, his policies, their implementation, and about Malaysia, since the riots of May 13, 1969, because during much of that period Mahathir and Malaysia were one.
I agree with the general thrust of the book, because Wain showed that many towering "autocratic figures" in East Asia were giants and had very strong views about where the state and society should go, and were so obsessed about achieving them, such that they had no scruples about their ways and methods toward this end.
In the end, most of them damaged themselves politically after they later unraveled what they had achieved. That happened for instance with former presidents Sukarno and Soeharto.
Sukarno achieved independence and unity for the nation, but ignored the economy and started to exhibit megalomaniacal tendencies over Indonesia and his leadership, and in the end the people rejected him and his misadventures, including the confrontation against Malaysia and Singapore.
Soeharto became a hero in 1965 by opposing the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and later Sukarno himself. He also restored the economy and built Indonesia into a real "East Asian miracle". But then he did not know how to stop, stayed too long, and introduced corruption, collusion and nepotism, which were rejected by the Indonesian people.
Former PM Mahathir, as Wain has shown, was a "giant" in the Malaysian context. He had a vision about the future of Malaysia and the role the Malays should have in it. He wanted to change Malaysia's economy, which was inherited from British colonialism, where Malays comprising a slight majority of the population had only a share of 7 or 8 percent of the GDP. He intended to increase this share to 30 percent in 20 years. In addition, he wanted to give the Malays self-confidence and self-respect, because emotionally they were downtrodden by British colonialism and had lost all that. He was also willing to change the Western model of development into an East Asian one, where the Japanese model sprang to mind.
He tried very hard to put Malaysia on the map internationally. And he wanted to show that a medium-sized country had the wherewithal of a big one. And that was why he wanted to assert Malaysia's viewpoint in ASEAN. That was why he had problems with Soeharto, not least over the idea of an East Asia Economic Grouping (EAEG), in response to the walls being erected by the EU in Europe and NAFTA in North America. He also took the lead in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) without recognition of Indonesia's earlier achievements in the NAM.
He believed that a medium-size country could play a role. And he compromised on the economy and even on the security side, by accepting the Western model after all and establishing a special agreement with the United States in several areas of security. But he also burdened Malaysia with his "white elephant" projects as a part of his industrialization strategy. Furthermore, he damaged various institutions, such as on the role of the rulers, and above all the judicial institutions.
He was not able to fight the money politics in UMNO, and he damaged the bureaucracy, especially those in charge of public order, such as the police and the attorney general's office, besides the judiciary.
On Islam, he was a rhetorical proponent of moderate Islam, but in practice the PM's office (the religious department unit) outlined policies that were more and more conservative and constricted openness and recognition of plurality.
His legacy, therefore, has been mixed. While it seems from the outside there were a lot of achievements and many were real, he also caused a lot of damage, which creates a major challenge in the future for Malaysia's leadership. There was a lot of waste and corruption, and on balance nobody really knows what the end result is.
The book is excellent in terms of the background stories of Mahathir's relations with many of his close compatriots in UMNO, as shown in the two splits within the leadership (Razaleigh/Musa versus Mahathir, and Mahathir against Anwar Ibrahim), and on the speculation about what happened with Abdullah Badawi's leadership when he became PM and fell out with Mahathir, as well as the new challenges from Anwar and the chances of Najib's leadership in the future. This is a book about Malaysia that must be read.
The writer is Vice Chair, Board of Trustees, CSIS Foundation.
