BY NICK EVERETT
On October 31, the 22-year-rule of Mahathir Mohammed ended, when he handed over Malaysia's prime ministership to his deputy, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Mahathir's rule ended with controversy, when he remarked at the Organisation of Islamic Countries Conference on October 16, "today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them". These comments became the subject of a storm of criticism in the international media. But the comments, intended for Mahathir's domestic audience, sat comfortably with a race-card strategy that would make even John Howard blush.
Mahathir's first controversy was the publication of the Malay Dilemma after the May 13, 1969 race riots in Kuala Lumpur. In it Mahathir declared: "Immigrants (Malaysians of Indian or Chinese descent) are guests until properly absorbed." He advocated "affirmative action" to create a Malay "entrepreneurial class". "We must have as many Malay businessmen and millionaires as there are Chinese", he wrote.
The publication was banned by the Tumku-led government and Mahathir was temporarily expelled from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).
But the May 13 "incident" emerged as a coup for the ascendant Malay capitalists. The "New Economic Policy" pioneered by Mahathir became a green light for the new Malay ruling class to amass wealth. The policy assisted the growth of a Malay capitalist class through strong government intervention and close ties between the UMNO and its capitalist cronies. Mahathir justified this policy with the claim "the best way to keep the shares in bumiputra [Malay] hands is to hand them over to the bumiputras most capable of retaining them, which means the well-to-do".
Jeyakumar Devaraj, Sungai Siput branch chairperson of the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM), explains: "If one accepts that the creation of a Malay capitalist class is Mahathir's political mission, then it is easy to understand his antipathy to trade unionism and his frequent exhortations for workers to complain less and raise productivity, as well as his 'recalcitrant' stance vis-a-vis big international capital."
Mahathir's ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition "unites" three parties along racial lines — the UMNO, the Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress. Each party competes for electoral support from its respective "racial" constituency by pandering to racial "interests", with the latter two parties playing the role of obedient underlings to UMNO.
According to Kua Kia Soong, director of the human rights organisation Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM), "race has been so deeply institutionalised that it is a key factor determining benefits from government development policies, bids for business contracts, education policy, social policy, cultural policy, entry into educational institutions, discounts for purchasing houses and other official policies".
But this so-called affirmative action has done nothing to alleviate the poverty of the most oppressed sections of Malaysian society and only contributes to racial tensions. In recent years racial violence has exploded in the kampungs of Muniandy, Medan and Rawa, with the majority of the victims being Indian Malaysians.
Chinese and Indian Malaysians have over the last two decades voiced protests against this blatant racism. In response, Mahathir and UMNO leaders have firmly laid down the line. In 1986, Abdullah Ahmad warned: "Let us make no mistake — the political system in Malaysia is founded on Malay dominance."
Backing up this race-based policy is a subservient media, which never fails to raise the spectre of the May 13 race riots whenever there is a threat to the status quo. UMNO's youth organisation also act as storm troopers when necessary.
At the 1996 Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor (APCET II), held in Kuala Lumpur, hundreds of UMNO youth violently disrupted the conference before 95 delegates — the victims of the violence — were detained by police. In 1999, hundreds of UMNO youth stormed the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall to break up an assembly demanding civil rights.
Perhaps the harshest weapon in UMNO's repressive armoury is the Internal Security Act (ISA), enacted in 1960. Under the ISA, police can detain anyone deemed a threat to "national security" for up to 60 days, usually in solitary confinement and without access to lawyers or contact with their families. The home minister can then extend the detention for another two years, renewable for an indefinite period.
Human rights organisations have documented cases of intense mental and even physical torture of detainees.
In 1974, following the Baling peasant uprising in the north-west state of Kedah, hundreds of student leaders were arrested and many detained under the ISA.
During one of the most widespread crackdowns in Malaysia's history — Operasi Lalang in 1986 — 106 opposition leaders, social activists, religious teachers and educationists were detained without trial under the ISA. Following the release of the last of these detainees in 1989, the Detainees' Family Support Group, ISA detainees and other activists formed SUARAM to campaign for the abolition of the ISA.
In April 2001, 10 student leaders were arrested under the ISA after involvement in a large demonstration to commemorate the second anniversary of the conviction of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. They were accused of trying to violently overthrow the government, using "grenades" and "bombs".
One of those detained was Tian Chua, an organiser of the "people's power" demonstration at Anwar's sentencing on April 14, 1999. Tian is vice-president of the Parti Keadilan (National Justice Party) and has a long history of organising workers in Malaysia. Tian and five others were released in June this year after the government decided not to renew their two-year detention orders.
Currently at least 103 people are detained under the ISA for alleged involvement in terrorist activities since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York's World Trade Center.
Most recently detained under the ISA are 13 Malaysian students who were arrested after being deported from Pakistan on November 10 for alleged involvement with the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist group. Like the other 90 "suspects" currently held under the ISA, no evidence has been brought before a court to substantiate the allegations against them.
The wave of detentions that followed Anwar's sentencing coincided with the emergence of a powerful reformasi movement that saw thousands take to the streets demanding democratic reforms. This movement was also a sharp political reflection of the 1997-98 economic crisis, when Anwar emerged as a critic of Mahathir's policies.
"The over extended, flabby and comparatively inefficient units of Malay capital that government largesse had built over the past 15 years was in danger of liquidation", notes PSM's Jeyakumar. "Mahathir's life project was threatened... and anyone obstructing the defence of the nascent Malay capitalist class had to go, whether it be the IMF or a popular deputy who had not fully understood the overall game-plan!"
Mahathir's suppression of the 1999 reformasi movement has not succeeded in snuffing out the struggles of Malaysia's poor. According to PSM president Nasir Hashim, "our experiences with urban pioneers ["squatters"], plantation workers, factory workers, workers in the services industry, hawkers, farmers [and] environmental pollution gave us insights to the psyche, strengths and weaknesses of marginalised communities."
The PSM has been a critical force in recent years in assisting the struggles of "urban pioneers". For most of [these] workers "the land that they settled and developed into communities [was] promised to them in the early '70s", said Nasir. "But they became squatters overnight when the developers with the help of local politicians, land offices, police and local municipalities gang-up to evict them."
Nasir predicted that "after Mahathir will be Mahathirism... His influence over UMNO and Barisan Nasional leaders will linger for a long time to come".
"Unfortunately", said Nasir, "some [political parties] prefer to be permanent opposition political parties and are quite agreeable to the idea of fine tuning the capitalist system rather than debunking this exploitative capitalist system to seek new and dynamic alternatives to development."
The activism of the PSM, and the emergence also of a new generation of student radicals following the 1999 reformasi movement, suggests that the legacy of "Mahathirism" won't be going unchallenged.
[Nick Everett travelled to Malaysia and met with democracy activists in late October. Information for this article was compiled from the web sites of SUARAM <http://www.suaram.org> and the Malaysian Socialist Party < http://www.parti-A HREF="mailto:sosialis.org"><sosialis.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003.
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