I have no fear because I just speak my mind,” Malaysia’s former helmsman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad once remarked to an interviewer. It was a generic answer to a specific question about his scathing criticism of US policy at the time.
But just as he was criticising the US fleet in Asia and pretending to shoo it far away from his country’s shores, Mahathir was busy signing secret deals with Washington, giving US forces all sorts of access in Malaysia, including training facilities on its soil, allowing its Navy to call in at his country’s ports for repair and setting up a facility to overhaul military aircraft. Now, a new biography of him, Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, by Barry Wain, an old Asia hand, unmasks the real Mahathir and many of his secret deals in business and diplomacy.
Six years after Mahathir voluntarily stepped down as Malaysia’s leader, he still hogs the limelight. Clearly, the man is no run-of-the mill retiree put to pasture. A sarcastic remark about a government policy at some seminar here, a biting attack on his foes in the government there or a jibe at an old nemesis in the opposition — he is still unstoppable even at 84. With a regular blog and speeches, indeed, Mahathir has something to say almost every other day. Little wonder, then, that Malaysia watchers are trying to figure out just who this man is, what he wants now and what he will get up to next.
To be sure, Wain’s 360-page, 150,000 word tome reads more like serious long-form journalism than a textbook or racy tabloid fodder. “I am a journalist, so I approached the book as a series of longish feature stories,” Wain says. “My idea was to combine the best of both journalism and academia.” The veteran journalist says he “set out to produce a book that was well-written, engaging and accessible, while giving the text an underlying scholarly credibility”. He has succeeded with flying colours.
Fascinating tale
Why a book on Mahathir? Why now? Make no mistake, “Mahathir has been one of the most successful politicians in Southeast Asia — in fact, all of Asia — over the last 50 years”, says Wain. “I just wanted to tell his story because it is one of the more fascinating tales in Southeast Asia that needs telling.”
Through extensive research and the inclusion of original interview material, Wain has produced a book of interest to both general readers and a scholarly audience. Although part of his target audience may be in academia, Maverick has no real theoretical framework. “My instinct was to cover everything that was known about him and perhaps uncover a bit more of what was behind the man, his politics and policies,” he says.
Maverick, which took Wain 2½ years to write, races through the Mahathir and modern Malaysia story in three distinct parts.
The first part — the Making of a Malay Champion — takes readers through Mahathir’s early years as a chauvinist hawk through to his ascension as prime minister. The core of the book comprises chapters with a thematic treatment of his 22 years in office: his foreign policy, Islamisation, his relationship with and treatment of his heir-apparent Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Malay politics, economics, financial scandals as well as his battle with institutions like the royalty. The final segment — The Turmoil in Retirement — deals with Mahathir’s legacy and his place in history.
Australian-born Wain, 65, a writer-in-residence at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, is an odd man to chronicle the story of the Malaysian strongman. He didn’t cover Malaysia during the Mahathir years, although he was managing editor and, later, editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, when his newspaper, along with other regional publications, was a target of Mahathir’s venom for western press.
Wain got into journalism straight out of high school with a cadetship at TV broadcaster Channel 9 in Brisbane and worked for state broadcaster ABC before joining the national daily The Australian in 1965. As The Australian’s defence correspondent, Wain covered the Vietnam War. “I went to Vietnam in 1971 for two months only to return to Canberra, quit my job and move permanently to Asia,” he recalls.
After a stint with the Far Eastern Economic Review as an associate editor, he joined The Asian Wall Street Journal in 1976. He served as the Journal’s Malaysia correspondent and, later, as its diplomatic correspondent based in Bangkok. He then went on to become the paper’s managing editor, editor and, later, editor-at-large in Hong Kong. A decade ago, he moved to Singapore as its Southeast Asia correspondent, a position he held until his retirement five years ago. It was while working as the Journal’s Kuala Lumpur correspondent between 1977 and 1979 that he first encountered Mahathir, who was then deputy prime minister. He has followed the maverick politician’s career closely since, regularly visiting Malaysia over the past 30 years.
When he first began working on the Maverick, Wain recalls Malaysians telling him that they knew everything about their own leader. “Let’s see what you can surprise us with,” was one oft-heard comment. “My idea was not to pack the book with a lot of surprises, so to speak,” says Wain. The final product is a book about a man who was prime minister for 22 years and has been in public life for 50 years; as such, a lot of the material is already in public domain. That doesn’t mean there are no surprises or that Wain pulls any punches. Still, a project like the one he undertook basically involved the grunt work of collecting a lot of information and putting it all together in a coherent fashion and peppering it with strong analysis.
Among Maverick’s surprises is the revelation of a secret security agreement that Mahathir signed with the US in 1984 that gave Washington access to a jungle warfare training school in Johor, and allowed the US to set up a small shiprepair facility in Lumut as well as an overhaul-and-repair facility for military transport aircraft outside Kuala Lumpur. “I had all the details of the pact and I put it to Mahathir,” recalls Wain of how he finally drew the former PM into admitting there was such a pact.
“Mahathir said it was all [US Defence Secretary] Caspar Weinberger’s idea. He agreed to it because he thought it was good for the Malaysian armed forces. It got the Malaysian forces interacting with US forces and training with them.” Why, then, was the pact kept a secret for so long? “When I asked him, Mahathir told me he didn’t see anything wrong with the fact that the pact wasn’t widely known,” recalls Wain.
Driven by determination
So, what drove the man? Money? Power? “I don’t think it was money,” says Wain, even though the Mahathir clan is a fairly prosperous one these days. “I believe he was driven by the determination to develop Malaysia with Malays having a prominent role in it.” Mahathir’s vision was to modernise the country, to develop Malaysia and make it a respected nation, he says. “To achieve that, he needed power and he needed to stay in power for a fairly long time,” says Wain. “I guess at some point, staying in power became the highest priority for him and he justified everything by saying it was all for his dream for a modern, prosperous country.”
Mahathir actually still feels that, despite his 22 years in office, he didn’t have enough time to achieve his goals. “I got the feeling that, left to himself, he probably would have wanted to stay on another five or 10 years,” says Wain. Unlike other nationalist leaders who reigned in Asia and Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Mahathir, who became PM in 1981, didn’t push socialism. “He had the political mindset — being anti-colonial and all — but, to his credit, he adapted and was right on betting that free market economy was the way to go,” he adds.
Although driven by a desire to transform Malaysia into a modern nation, there is no denying that, in the end, Mahathir just became addicted to power, says Wain. To extend his power base, prolong his stay in office and reward loyalty, he created dominant ruling party Umno’s powerful money machine, which helped fuel what he himself called “money politics” and “corruption”. Indeed, politics and business became a fairly lethal mix in Malaysia, with Umno turning into a vast business conglomerate with investments spanning the entire economy. For Mahathir, the end almost always seemed to justify the means.
To his credit, Wain was determined to chase down some of the urban myths about Mahathir that have been retold and regurgitated over the years. Take the story about how a Chinese Singaporean taxi driver once dropped off Mahathir at the Malay servant quarters, for example. “I have that in the book but I attribute it to [Minister Mentor] Lee Kuan Yew because Mahathir had related it to Lee. There was no point in me asking Mahathir or Lee about it because it is in public domain.”
Wain says one thing he learnt about Mahathir’s Singapore student days was that, as a young Malay from a small town in Kedah, he did not like the brashness of Singaporeans, particularly ethnic Chinese. “But even during his student days, Mahathir had a great admiration for the development of Singapore,” says Wain. “He might not admit it so openly these days, but people told me that’s what he privately said at the time.”
Another urban myth retold over and over is how Mahathir had registered at the then University of Singapore’s medical school as an Indian. Wain chased that one down and found it not to be true. “Mahathir was fairly proud to call himself a Malay when he arrived in Singapore as a student,” he says. “He was writing pieces for The Straits Times on Malay culture, Malay farming and Malay cuisine. So, calling himself an Indian in Singapore would have been totally inconsistent with everything he did in Singapore during his student days.”
Tracing family roots
Wain spent a bit of time trying to trace Mahathir’s Indian roots. “The truth is that Dr Mahathir’s father, despite his Indian ancestry, did not speak any Indian language or talk to his children about his relatives or hometown in India,” he says. While Mahathir has long admitted that his ancestors migrated from India, it was a sensitive subject until he stepped down from office. The urban myth in Malaysia is that the family is from Kerala and spoke the Malayalee dialect, although a cousin once reportedly heard Mahathir’s father speak impeccable Tamil.
For his part, author Wain takes Mahathir at face value when told that he didn’t know whether the family was from Tamil Nadu or Kerala. “I accepted his words and, since there are no records and his father never discussed it, there is no way of knowing,” Wain says. “I have met people who claim they know of a particular village in Kerala but when challenged or asked for records have backed down.” While Mahathir was prime minister, people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh claimed that he was from some village or other in their country. “They all wanted to claim that a successful, international leader was one of their own, except that Mahathir says he doesn’t know where the family came from.”
Does he believe Mahathir? “I don’t believe Mahathir is deliberately misleading people and he knows exactly where his grandfather came from,” says Wain. Pressed further, the veteran journalist will only say “ancestry is an important element but it is just one small part of the big Mahathir story that I was trying to tell”.
Ability to compartmentalise
So, who is the real Mahathir? “I think he is a genuine person who has the ability to put things in compartments — politics, personal and family life,” says Wain. “He believes in things like honesty, hard work and loyalty. Some people who have seen him do fairly ruthless things in politics might say he has never practised what he preached. The explanation might be he puts things in compartments.”
In retirement, Mahathir may have admitted to the country’s and his party’s shortcomings, but Wain says he doesn’t believe he failed in anything he himself undertook. While Mahathir, who took office with the slogan “Clean, Efficient and Trustworthy”, admits there is rampant corruption in Malaysia, he doesn’t believe he was responsible for it and certainly doesn’t think he or his family profited while he was in office, notes Wain. “Actually, Mahathir sees himself as the man who tried to stop money politics in Umno and stop political corruption,” he elaborates. These days, Mahathir also constantly talks about people letting him down. If there is one mistake that Mahathir will grudgingly admit to, however, it is his choice of Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as his successor. “I really didn’t know how he would turn out,” Mahathir told Wain of the man who succeeded him six years ago and stepped down in March this year.
Yet, the Mahathir-Abdullah spat was as bizarre as they come. Wain points out that Mahathir was guilty of all the things he criticised his successor of doing, and probably more. Whether it was lack of press freedom, privileges for their children or contracts, Mahathir was far more guilty than Abdullah. “By criticising Abdullah and calling Malaysia ‘a police state’, Mahathir only invited examination of his own record,” he says. “At one point in his spat with Abdullah, Mahathir asked: ‘Where is press freedom?’ Well, press freedom is, unfortunately, just where Mahathir left it.”
Mahathir can also dig in his heels on issues when he wants to. Wain says his views on two controversies have not changed over the years: his sacking of former Lord President Salleh Abas and other top judges and his dismissal of his heir-apparent Anwar. “He refuses to budge on those two issues,” says Wain, who had repeatedly queried him. “Mahathir will not hear any other view or evidence because he made up his mind about them a long time ago,” says Wain, who learnt nothing new when he asked him. “There is no point talking to him about the judges or Anwar and I doubt that will change as long as he lives.”
Varied sources
Writing about a controversial and complex person like Mahathir can be especially challenging for even accomplished writers. “For one thing, everyone has an opinion about him,” Wain says. There are hardly any shades of grey. “The good thing with a living subject, however, is that you can go back and check the facts, which I was able to do with Mahathir.”
Indeed, access to the former premier, his family, friends and associates was not an issue. “Mahathir granted me three long interviews,” says Wain. “I kept sending him follow-up questions and he answered all of them.” Wain also met Mahathir’s wife, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah, daughter Marina and son Datuk Mukhriz as well as other family members, including nephews and distant relatives.
He also spoke to former cabinet colleagues, including his two former deputies Tun Musa Hitam and Anwar. “I spent time in Alor Setar and was quite lucky in tracking down or running into people who were old friends or who had known him when he was young,” he says. “It is a small place and they just rounded up people who knew Mahathir in the early years.”
Were there people who refused to talk? “No one turned me down outright,” says Wain. “Some were understandably cautious about anything they said about Mahathir, while others were just not very forthcoming.”
One person who could have helped him with more information was former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin, who had Mahathir’s complete trust in matters related to finance. “I did get to meet Daim eventually,” Wain says. “He answered some questions and agreed to answer more as well as provide me with documentation. I never got to see him again or his answers or documents that he had promised.”
To Wain, the mega millionaire financier was a critical piece of the Malaysian puzzle. “Daim was very close to Mahathir during a crucial period in Malaysian history,” he says. “He held the purse strings, so he was the key to understanding many of the financial scandals.” Yet, as he probed Daim, Wain found the wily former finance czar was “someone who clearly didn’t want to say much”.
When one is doing a book on someone of Mahathir’s age, it is inevitable that some of his contemporaries are no longer around to give an alternative take on things. The late Noordin Sopiee, who was Mahathir’s key foreign policy adviser, passed away just as Wain began researching his book. “Noordin was an old friend of mine and I am sure he would have talked frankly,” he says.
Fortunately, there were others Wain talked to just before they died, like Tunku Abdullah of Negri Sembilan, a close friend of Mahathir. “If I had started the book five years ago, I would have had access to more information but, that said, I still covered a lot of ground.”
While a book about a subject like Mahathir can never be over-reported, Wain claims he met as many people as he wanted to. “There is a limit on how many people you can hunt down because, unless you prioritise and focus on just a core group, you end up talking to hundreds, keep uncovering new things and take 10 years to finish,” he says. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of 10 years.”
Leaving a legacy
The key for Wain as an author was trying to figure out who Mahathir really is, why he did what he did and his motivations for doing those things. “His detractors say, whenever he breaks down and cries, he deserves an acting award,” says Wain. “They’ve never believed he was sincere.” But, he adds, Mahathir has always been soft-spoken and shy. That is a total contradiction of what most people know him as — a harsh person when it comes to denouncing people or governments and a ruthless political operator, he says.
So, what was he like as a prime minister? Mahathir’s fans — and there are still many in Malaysia — say he only re-made Malaysia’s institutions, like the judiciary, royalty, the civil service as well as Umno, in his own mould. His detractors say he systematically destroyed long-standing institutions and pillars of Malaysian democracy.
“It is clear that he undermined and wrecked many of the country’s institutions over the years,” concedes Wain. “His eyes were mainly on developing the country’s physical infrastructure — the iconic buildings, tower blocks, the shopping malls and airports. He neglected everything else at the expense of visible infrastructure.”
Is that how he will be remembered? Over the years, Mahathir has told interviewers that he didn’t really care about his own legacy but Wain, who heard Mahathir repeat that mantra, says, “It was the one thing I knew I couldn’t take at face value.” As he sees it, “the man really cares about his legacy. All his actions and words since he stepped down clearly point to that”. While Mahathir doesn’t come out as the ruthless but benevolent dictator that he is remembered as in much of Southeast Asia, in Wain’s Maverick, he emerges as a wily, visionary politician who had more than his fair share of financial scandals and political missteps, but remained determined to change the course of his country to the end.
Assif Shameen is consulting editor at The Edge Singapore
This article appeared in Corporate page of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 784, Dec 7 – 13, 2009.