Mahathir’s politics of fatigue

Bizarre because Mahathir, who is very much responsible for Malaysia’s current political and economic woes, is being held up as the only leader who can save this Southeast Asian nation.

What’s more, the 90-year-old politician, who also resigned from ruling party Umno last week, is being hailed for that role by the likes of Lim Kit Siang, the granddaddy of Malaysia’s opposition politics, and jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who many Malaysians believe is a victim of a high-level government conspiracy engineered by Mahathir’s supporters.

The unfolding political drama underscores the desperate state of the country’s politics, particularly when ordinary Malaysians grudgingly admit that only someone of Mahathir’s stature can provide the leadership to restore much-needed discipline among the opposition. 

As the new de facto opposition leader, Mahathir is betting that toxic public sentiment towards Umno, particularly among the politically dominant Malay population, will be sufficient to kick Najib and Umno out of power at the next election that must be held before mid-2018.

The strategy looks good on paper but in reality, the odds are against Mahathir and his awkward band of opposition personalities, who have little in common with each other except their hostility towards Najib.

There is history to back this. He sacked and jailed Anwar in 1998 because his deputy’s economic policies to deal with the regional financial crisis were threatening the survival of his business cronies. It did not take long for him to sour on successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who, shortly after taking over the premiership in November 2003, moved to put a stop to several of Mahathir’s big-ticket projects. But nothing infuriated Mahathir more than the release of Anwar in September 2004. He subsequently resigned from Umno for the first time and campaigned mercilessly against Abdullah, who was forced to step down and hand over the premiership to Najib in April 2009.

Mahathir has never been enthusiastic about Najib’s policies. Major bugbears include Najib’s cosy relations with the Singapore leadership and his refusal to revive the crooked bridge proposal to replace the Causeway. Another sore point has been Najib’s lukewarm support for his pet projects, such as the national car Proton, which is today the last surviving vestige of Mahathir’s costly industrialisation policies.

The big push against Najib came early last year, when Mahathir began attacking him for systematically undermining the independence of key state institutions, mismanaging the country’s economy and abusing public funds in the financial debacle at state-owned 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

But many ills plaguing Malaysia today are direct legacy issues from Mahathir’s more than two decades in power. The undermining of key public institutions to ensure their subservience to Umno took place during his premiership. The assault on the judiciary in the late 1980s presaged the cowing of other arms of government, which was showcased during the controversial trials of Anwar beginning in 1998, after the finance minister fell out with his boss.

Malaysia’s current economic malaise is also due to the legacy policies of the Mahathir era. His industrialisation push at the expense of developing the country’s already flourishing agriculture sectors lies in tatters. Billions of dollars invested in steel and cement plants have failed and the only vestige of the ambitious economic agenda – Proton – is struggling under a mountain of debt.

As for the scandal surrounding 1MDB, the company mirrors similar failed ventures that Mahathir began with the blurring of the lines separating politics and business. He and his financial adviser, former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, engineered Umno’s push into business largely through controversial awards of billions of dollars in infrastructure contracts from the government. But many of the Umno-linked companies, such as the Renong Group, got in deep debt and were subsequently bailed out through the use of public funds.

Last week’s clean break from the Umno-led government shows Mahathir’s political cunning to recast himself as a statesman and to distance himself from the legacy issues plaguing Malaysia.

It’s a gambit that could work.

Among younger Malaysians, Mahathir is already coming across as a champion. 

Malaysia’s largely older urban set credits him for expanding the middle class and affords soft focus to Mahathir’s many controversial policies.

But fatigue with Mahathir’s brand of combative politics is gaining ground among rural Malays.

It was best summed up last week by PAS information chief Nasrudin Hassan, who said that the former premier’s move to leave Umno smacked of political expediency. 

Like Nasrudin, many Malaysians need to ask whether Mahathir is serious about reforms or whether he is simply grinding a personal axe.