What Lies Beneath Mahathir's Attacks

What Lies Beneath Mahathir's Attacks

2006-06-29 15:38:11 MYT


The conflict that is brewing between former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his successor Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi goes much deeper than the four issues which the former has raised to the government.

Essentially, the conflict represents an intra-Malay/UMNO conflict over access to resources, business opportunities and power.

Approaching the issue from a purely political perspective would not enable one to decipher the nature and the dimension of the present conflict. Instead, an approach which takes into account the subtle linkages between politics and economics would be more appropriate.

Only then would one be able to provide a better and more realistic assessment of the basis of the present conflict and how race, religion and nationalism have been invoked to hide the clamour for wealth and power between the two power bases in Malaysian society.

UMNO politics, in general, has become much more materialistic in the last few decades or so. Gone are the days when ideological differences took centre stage.

Today, the struggle in UMNO--all in the name of religion, God and race--is invariably related to the acquisition of material wealth and the need to maintain this wealth by seeking access to politics or political patronage.

While money politics was outwardly shunned as the evil that would destroy Malay unity, it has proved impossible to dismantle. In fact, one could argue that, without money politics, UMNO would have fragmented a long time ago.

Efforts by UMNO leaders to rid the party of money politics have merely been feeble attempts to hide the stark reality of corruption, patronage and moral decay.

Access To Resources

This has been happening for some time. Past conflicts in UMNO, centred on certain key personalities, have sometimes led to splits in the party over the acquisition of wealth and power. For instance, the conflict between Tun Dr Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in the 1980s was not about higher politics, but about access to wealth and power.

Similarly, the conflict between Tun Dr Mahathir and Datuk Seri Abdullah is about forces aligned to these two leaders competing for scarce resources and power. The conflict has become bitter and acrimonious because the Mahathir side seems to have lost access to material wealth by way of contracts, business opportunities and favouritism.

Furthermore, the entry of Datuk Seri Abdullah's relatives in the competition for resources has complicated the picture so much so that Tun Dr Mahathir, in an indirect swipe at Datuk Seri Abdullah, recently told the media that he had never shown favouritism to his family members or relatives while in office.

It is quite obvious that when Tun Dr Mahathir raised the four issues to the Abdullah administration, the implicit argument was that his friends had lost out in the competition for government contracts and business licences and that the forces aligned to Datuk Seri Abdullah had gained unfairly.

The four issues in question are the decision to accede to Singapore by cancelling the half-bridge project, the sale of Proton's motorcycle company Augusta to an outsider, the removal of Proton's former head Tengku Mahaleel and the issuance of Approved Permits (APs) to certain individuals and groups.

In seeking a response, Tun Dr Mahathir invoked both the nationalistic and pro-bumiputera arguments to buttress his claims. On the bridge issue, he attacked the government for not being nationalistic and not standing up to Singapore.

With regard to the other three issues, he raised the spectre of how deserving bumiputras have been sidelined by the present regime and how the present system of awarding APs favours groups or individuals close to ministers.

In fact, the AP controversy had appeared much earlier when Tun Dr Mahathir criticised International Trade and Industry Ministry Rafidah Aziz for not being transparent about the awarding of such permits.

Indeed, he has been raising these issues consistently at different forums, not because he wants to criticise the government but because he has come to be seen as the leader of a group within UMNO that is generally dissatisfied with the administration's policies and programmes.

In the last few years, the Abdullah government has sidelined many Malay entrepreneurs and businessmen, especially those still loyal to Tun Dr Mahathir. In addition, the rise of Datuk Seri Abdullah's son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, in the corporate world has been a sore point for many Malay business leaders.

Very recently, one of Tun Dr Mahathir's closest aides, Mathias Chang, criticised Khairy and a senior newspaper editor for messing up some of the programmes initiated by Tun Dr Mahathir.

Erosion Of Image

Even if it is not clear if Tun Dr Mahathir is raising these issues for altruistic reasons or for nationalistic reasons, it does not negate the validity of his arguments. After all, many government policies and programmes are shrouded in mystery--no one knows the actual beneficiaries. Also, corruption is still rampant in the government despite the rhetoric adopted by Datuk Seri Abdullah's regime that it would eradicate it.

Despite many allegations of corruption, there are ministers and officials who have never been investigated or removed from their positions. Tun Dr Mahathir's point about the controversial removal of Tengku Mahaleel, who was apparently doing a good job as Proton head, has never been clarified to the public.

Also, the criticism of Datuk Seri Rafidah's handling of the APs still begs an explanation.

Datuk Seri Abdullah's "good guy" image is fast eroding in Malaysian politics. His policy of silence on controversial matters of societal or public concern might become a liability.

While he offered Islam Hadhari or progressive Islam as an alternative to the PAS ideology, he has never taken the party to task--unlike Tun Dr Mahathir--for its controversial stance in a multiracial Malaysian society.

To date, he has refused to confront Tun Dr Mahathir or refute his statements. Perhaps the general public does not want him to confront Tun Dr Mahathir, but surely it expects some kind of rational response to the issues raised.

It is rather unfortunate that it has taken a person like Tun Dr Mahathir to highlight the problems of the government. After all, the situation might be new, but the opposition has raised the same issues for many years.

While he may be emerging as the new saviour of Malaysia, the public will never forget that the seeds of decay were sown during his long tenure in office. Still, being open-minded, they nonetheless think that he should be given a fair hearing by the government.

In many ways, Malaysian politics has not changed. Politics within political parties has not transcended the narrow confines of ethnicity, race, religion and crass materialism. In fact, the revival of ethnicity and religion seems to be invariably related to the way resources are allocated in society.

Politics in UMNO is not about taking the country to greater heights and improving race relations, but about how certain individuals can gain access to wealth and power in the never-ending game of greed and corruption.


By P Ramasamy
The Straits Times/ANN