93-year-old Mahathir returns as Leader of Malaysia

On the 9th May 2018, Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional coalition lost hold of the Parliament to Pakatan Harapan for the first time in Malaysian history. Another unprecedented element of this election was that Mahathir Mohamad became the oldest currently-serving state leader by age, at 92 years-old when he got elected in May this year. Mahathir coming to power, for the second time round has been seen as an opportunity to catalyse change. Voters have crushed the streets with tsunamis of enthusiasm. It inevitably however, sparks curious minds to think, why would Malaysians support a leader that has swiftly switched sides from the pro-government Barisan Nasional coalition to the opposition bloc?

First Time in Power

Nearly 40 years ago, Mahathir became the leader of Malaysia for the first time, an expected victory for the government. Politically, a number of authoritarian policies were carried out on his political opponents and the judiciary. In terms of Mahathir’s opposition, he was generous in employing repression against more extreme exponents of Islamism. Ibrahim Libya was one of the many popular Islamist leaders killed in the police shoot-out in 1985. Al-Arqam, a religious sect, was subsequently banned with its leader, Ashaari Mohammed arrested under the Internal Security Act (more below). Only 4 years into his rule, Mahathir has embarked on his quest to eliminate potential political or religious dissent.

After his narrow victory in the 1986 General Election against Team B by 43 votes (761 vs. 718), Mahathir purged 7 supporters of the opposition from his ministry. This uninterrupted flow of repressive practices facilitated an unbalanced political environment that lacks partisan diversification or pluralism. One-party politics was the recipe for authoritarianism; the ministry’s role of regulation, inspection and scrutinisation of government operations was completely scrapped.

A corrupted judiciary was essential to complete Mahathir’s dictatorial rule. In February 1988, the High Court ruled the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) illegal for some branches being unregistered. While Mahathir’s faction successfully registered under a new name, becoming a new party, Team B’s application was rejected. With Team B having to completely change its name, there is no doubt that a manipulated judiciary strengthened Mahathir’s position by playing the familiarity game while dampening opposition’s popularity and publicity. Mahathir extended his authoritarianism by carrying out a constitution amendment that removed the general power of High Courts to conduct judicial reviews. Despite a letter of protest sent by suspended judges, no action was taken to reverse the decision. The High Courts were stripped of their power to scrutinise law and order in Malaysia; judicial independence was no longer part of Malaysia.

More importantly, the Internal Security Acts were employed by the Mahathir government to completely silence discontentment. A protest by the UMNO Youth Wing against the appointment of non-Mandarin speaking administrators to Chinese schools resulted in Operation Lalang, with 119 people arrested and detained without charge under the Acts. The height of the crackdown was when Anwar Ibrahim outwardly promoted his superior religious credentials and covertly suggested he favoured loosening the restrictions on civil liberties; this resulted in him being dismissed as Deputy Prime Minister.

It could be argued that Mahathir’s economic success balanced the political dissent created. Inherited from Mahathir’s predecessors, the New Economic Policy in 1971 was designed to improve the economic position of bumiputera (Malaysia’s Malay & indigenous peoples) through targets and affirmative action in areas such as corporate ownership and university admission. Privatisation of government enterprises boosted economic opportunities for bumiputera enterprises, including airlines, utilities and telecommunication firms, accelerating to a rate of about 50 privatisations a year by the mid-1990s. As a result, this improved the working conditions of Malaysians in privatised industries and raised significant revenue for the government. Vision 2020, as part of the NEP aimed for Malaysia to transform into a fully developed country within 20 years; in order to achieve that, the country would have to attain at least a 7% growth in GDP per annum. The breakdown ethnic barriers served as a secure base for the economy to flourish; while opening up government programs designed to benefit local businesses enhanced cultural diversity in the business environment, a bigger pool of people contributed to the development of the country regardless of their ethnicity. The expiration of the NEP in 1991 saw it becoming replaced by the New Development Policy. It aimed include reducing poverty, which declined drastically from 16.5% to 7.2% 10 years after the imposition of NDP. This came with bonuses: while experiencing an inflow of foreign investment as the Mahathir government cut corporate taxes and liberalised financial regulations, infrastructure projects such as the Multimedia Super Corridor facilitated the development of information technology through exploiting external economies of scale. Praises of a speedy recovery from the Asian financial crisis came from all directions, for Mahathir being able to save the economy after the main stock exchange falling by 75% from Anwar’s policies. Further stabilising the Malaysian ringgit to the US dollar and raising government spending to boost domestic economy added to the mix of Mahathir’s recipe for domestic political triumph.

King with an expiration date

Fast forward to the present, Mahathir has become Malaysia’s Prime Minister, however with an expiration date of 2 years. Due to his old age, Mahathir has pledged to only sit on the throne until 2020 and appointed the former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim as his successor. This raises a number of questions: Firstly, Mahathir, himself, campaigned for the imprisonment of Anwar, where he was ousted from power and sacked in 1998 in a leadership dispute, ending up jailed on corruption and sodomy. Controversy was widespread as the move was seen as largely politically motivated. Freed in 2004 as his sodomy conviction was overturned, Anwar became the leading figure in the opposition (Mahathir’s current party) to government. Despite losing the 2013 general election, the party won nearly 51% of the popular vote. Although Anwar was imprisoned for the 2nd time in 2015 for another sodomy charge, he was swiftly released from prison in June, just a month after Mahathir came to power, and received a full pardon by the King so that he could be qualified to run for office under Malaysian Law. Mahathir, having previously described Anwar as morally unfit to lead the country, have received critiques for rushing Anwar’s rise to political power; he even met with the senior Communist Party leaders in Beijing this year. To add to that, even if Anwar, who has no intention of quashing the conservative sodomy laws, becomes Prime Minister after Mahathir, he would be working with MPs from the opposite camp. Could Anwar sustain political stability and echoes the rejoices of the people from the 2018 election? It will take longer than 7 months to confirm.

Foreign relations

To summarise Malaysia’s foreign relations with other countries, it could be said, similar to many Southeast Asian countries, it has long charted a careful course between Washington, with which it maintains low-key security cooperation, and Beijing, its largest trading partner. The previous PM Najib made some dodgy deals with China, and now Mahathir is here to clear up the mess. For example, it was revealed that Najib’s government paid the China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau, a Chinese construction company, nearly 90 percent ($2 billion) of the total cost for two pipelines that are less than 15 percent complete. Rarely protesting China’s actions, hoping for the economic powerhouse to recoup the losses from the 1 MDB fund. His tilt toward China became apparent after a Chinese state-owned company bought $2.3 billion worth of overvalued power assets from 1MDB in late 2015. Mahathir decisively ended China’s ‘unequal treaties’ with Najib and announced reconsidering allowing Chinese vessels into Malaysian waters.

Moving beyond Asia, the revelation that the 1MDB ‘donation’ was made by a Saudi royal to Malaysia begs questions. What countries could be considered as ‘allies’ of Malaysia and does Malaysia remains neutral on most foreign policies? To what extent is Malaysia involved in the Saudi-led Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition and is Malaysia was a silent participant of the Saudi offensive in Yemen? The confusion extends beyond the territory itself.

Mahathir’s visit to Beijing

Mahathir saw the recent visit (August 2018) to Beijing as a chance to reset bilateral ties, to cancel the ECRL infrastructure deal because of Malaysia’s current indebted fiscal position. Last year, the bilateral trade between the two countries grew by 13.8%, exceeding US $100bn per year. With the growth of Alibaba in Malaysia, it was originally predicted e-commerce and e-business will continue to grow and thus create trade opportunities that adds onto the bilateral trade.

During the face to face discussions, the Malaysian leadership took it as an opportunity to reassure them that despite the unfortunate cancellation of projects, she remained deeply committed to developing close and mutually beneficial economic relations with China. Politically, Mahathir sees it as a chance to finally right the previous mis-governance and abandon years of kleptocracy. The Malaysian prime minister even accused his predecessor Najib Razak of selling out the nation to Beijing by striking corruption-infested deals to his own benefit and, in exchange, keeping quiet over China's militarisation of South China Sea disputes at the expense of Malaysia.

The revised relationship has seen China respond by hosting a banquet joint press conference with Mahathir and had him personally received by State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Sustainable prosperity and security for both countries are hopefully in the making through projects that uphold transparency, economic viability, corruption free, and inclusion of local labour, technology and management. Given Malaysia’s centrality to regional politics, it has now become the leading voice for more mutually beneficial and balanced relations between smaller Southeast Asian states and China. To Mahathir, therefore, modern China was, and remains not a threat, but a historic opportunity.