[Gagal - itulah penyudah kata untuk Dr Mahathir. Dia gagal menggunakan sumber hasil mahsul Malaysia yang banyak itu untuk membangunkan negara dalam erti kata yang sebenarnya. Yang lebih dibangunkan adalah kroni rupanya. Bayangkan kekayaan anak-anaknya sendiri sebelum dan sesudah beliau berkuasa. Kemudian ukur berapa banyak tinggalnya rezab asing dalam negara sekarang - sudah tinggal kerak yang tidak sampai 4 bulan! Dan itu asyik berkurang berpanjangan walaupun sudah banyak formula diketengahkan. Pemergian Daim pun gagal menambah rezab inikan pula pengumuman Petronas untung berbilion sejak ditubuhkan. Malaysia kini sudah menghadapi masalah persepsi akibat Mahathir. Ini akan mengugat semua syarikat di negara ini termasuk syarikat pro-Umno sendiri. Pandanglah dan lihatlah - semua sedang mengikat perut sekarang ini sehingga bank pun terpaksa digabungkan sekali lagi. Jika tidak lebih banyak yang musnah nanti kerana dana sudah tidak mencukupi. Berhutanglah kita lagi dan lagi dan lagi... dan khidmat yang percuma sudah semakin tiada lagi. - Editor]

http://www.malaysiakini.com/Column/2001/07/2001071602.php3

Monday July 16

Dr M and the durian's drop

CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

1:55pm, Mon: The Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, completes two decades in office today, but it is a milestone not one he would like remembered. He failed in what he set out to do: to turn Malaysia into an important digit of the globalised and industrialised world.

He gained marks for how he transformed the cities into images of Western cities, and with it a modernity that the visiting Western tourist could come to terms with. But he could not sustain it.

The billions of ringgit he committed Malaysia to shake up the administration, privatise government assets on the spurious governing principle that government should stay out of services best done by private enterprise, all come home to roost. He wakes up this morning to a country in debt so voluminous that, in private hands, would hasten bankruptcy.

Mahathir on the morning of his completing two decades in office is in isolation. Almost everything he planned for when he took office in 1981 is not one he would like to be reminded about. He changed the face of Kuala Lumpur so that it now looks like a seedy Western city, but at a cost - monetary, cultural and social - yet to be calculated. He was more interested in the form, not substance, of his ideals.

Force-feeding

And, more important, he lost sight of the essential world view of the Malay he represented in government. He called them uncouth, unintelligent, living in the past, and other names - which he recounted yet again at the Umno general assembly. But the Malay has heard enough of it and, in the Malay tradition, rebels by not backing him and waits patiently for him to leave, in the manner of the farmer for his ripe durians to drop.

Leader in Malay is pemimpin and means more than its English rendering. It means to lead by holding hands. Leadership in the Malay tradition is to lead one's folk by holding their hands so that if they stumble one is there to right them and if one does, they, too. This is how the three Malaysian prime ministers before Mahathir conducted their affairs.

An impatient Mahathir thought all this old-fashioned, and, in a sense, like Rajiv Gandhi in India, came to office with his intellect and his computers to force-feed Malaysia into the 21st century, little realising that the Malay was comfortable in his current existence and not about to give up his known creature comforts for something unknown.

Mahathir, like Rajiv Gandhi, did not understand this important cultural trait. Both went against the predominant culture of their people, to force-feed their countries into the modern age.

Billionaires, slogans

Mahathir thought he could do this best by creating Malay billionaires who would then do their bit to buck the country up. They, instead, acquired wives, mistresses, expensive cars, country castles in Scotland, works of arts, debt beyond the needs of Croesus. Twenty years later, every one of them is technically bankrupt. The government had to set up special agencies to take care of their debt; otherwise the banking system would have crumbled.

When he came to office in 1981, he put his mark on the country by a series of slogans - 'Look East' was one, 'Leadership by Example' another - and he strengthened his rule with more slogans.

But his vision was out of touch with the country he led, with only a veneer at the top, those who benefitted from his policies, who proudly proclaimed their support, and who quickly fled, when the tide turned.

When Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah challenged him for the Umno presidency, a court case arising out of it led to Umno's disbandment. He formed Umno Baru, took over the assets, and forced the Razaleigh into the Opposition. Razaleigh eventually came back into Umno, but the Umno was not the political movement founded in 1946 but the political party that arose out of its disbandment.

Politics, not economics

Mahathir did not accept, or understand, that the political movement that brings a country independence, has a shelf life of three decades, at most. The Congress Party of India, founded in 1885, brought independence in 1947, but split into several factions in 1967, and now sits in the Opposition benches of Parliament. Umno led the country to independence in 1957, but was split three decades later.

The Umno today is not the Umno of 1957; the political party rules now as the movement did then. But this is ignored. The split in the Malay community Mahathir caused by forming Umno Baru worsened when he humiliated his third deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Whatever he had achieved in office took a back seat. And he struggles to return to the stature he had before Anwar's fall.

It is politics, not economics, which dictate how history would judge him. Without a stable political society, economic growth is not possible. One does not need a democracy for that. When the undercurrents are not in a leader's favour, he cannot move forward.

That eventually is the tragedy of Mahathir Mohamad. He did much to lift the Malays out of their complacency, turn Malaysia into a modern nation. But his methods were not what would have worked. He hectored, cajoled, shouted at the Malay to follow him; and the Malay wrote him off.

Role model failed

There is some reason to believe he took as a model how Lee Kuan Yew turned a sleepy entrepot into the bustling metropolis Singapore is. But Lee's methods worked in Singapore because the Confucian tradition of the majority of its Chinese population allowed the harsh methods he employed. The Chinese accepted it. The Malay pemimpin must use a different approach.

And Mahathir pays the price for it. He returns to the harsh methods of his anger. He cracks down hard on dissent, but since the dissent comes from the Malay community, his method is counter-productive. He is in control. He is isolated. Worse, the Malay looks for a political party other than Umno to look after Malay needs.

The balance sheet of 20 years has more red ink than black. The Malaysian is worse off today than in 1981. Everything is reduced to a monetary value beyond one's capacity to pay, be it hospital treatment or tolls. He is further inconvenienced when the government is put into more debt by the failure of privatisation.

The quitting of Daim Zainuddin as Finance minister and as treasurer of Umno, reflects a failure of his governance. For he has reduced the Umno general assembly to one of his creation, that it would not raise issues it should. The Malay now waits patiently for Mahathir to fall. He is sure of that as he is of his durian.