Malaysian Maverick

Book Review: Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Written by John Berthelsen

Friday, 04 December 2009

by Barry Wain. Palgrave Macmillan, 363pp. Available through Amazon, US$60.75. Available for Pre-order, to be released Jan 5.

In 1984 or 1985, when I was an Asian Wall Street Journal correspondent in Malaysia, an acquaintance called me and said he had seen a US Army 2-1/2 ton truck, known as a "deuce-and-a-half," filled with US military personnel in jungle gear on a back road outside of Kuala Lumpur.

Since Malaysia and the United States were hardly close friends at that point, I immediately went to the US Embassy in KL and asked what the US soldiers were doing there. I received blank stares. Similar requests to the Malaysian Ministry of Defense brought the same response. After a few days of chasing the story, I concluded that my acquaintance must have been seeing things and dropped it.

It turns out he wasn’t seeing things after all. In a new book, "Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times," launched Dec. 4 in Asia, former Asian Wall Street Journal editor Barry Wain solved the mystery. In 1984, during a visit to Washington DC in which Mahathir met President Ronald Reagan, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and others, he secretly launched an innocuous sounding Bilateral Training and Consultation Treaty, which Wain described as a series of working groups for exercises, intelligence sharing, logistical support and general security issues. In the meantime, Mahathir continued display a public antipathy on general principles at the Americans while his jungle was crawling with US troops quietly training for jungle warfare.

That ability to work both sides of the street was a Mahathir characteristic. In his foreword, Wain, in what is hoped to be a definitive history of the former prime minister’s life and career, writes that "while [Mahathir] has been a public figure in Malaysia for half a century and well known abroad for almost as long, he has presented himself as a bundle of contradictions: a Malay champion who was the Malays’ fiercest critic and an ally of Chinese-Malaysian businessmen; a tireless campaigner against Western economic domination who assiduously courted American and European capitalists; a blunt, combative individual who extolled the virtues of consensual Asian values."

Wain was granted access to the former premier for a series of exhaustive interviews. It may well be the most definitive picture painted of Mahathir to date, and certainly is even-handed. Wain, now a writer in residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, is by no means a Mahathir sycophant. Advance publicity for the book has dwelt on an assertion by Wain that Mahathir may well have wasted or burned up as much as RM100 billion (US$40 billion at earlier exchange rates when the projects were active) on grandiose projects and the corruption that that the projects engendered as he sought to turn Malaysia into an industrialized state. Although some in Malaysia have said the figure is too high, it seems about accurate, considering such ill-advised projects as a national car, the Proton, which still continues to bleed money and cost vastly more in opportunity costs for Malaysian citizens forced to buy any other make at huge markups behind tariff walls. In addition, while Thailand in particular became a regional center for car manufacture and for spares, Malaysia, handicapped by its national car policy, was left out.Read more..

Jeffrey Claims His Boys Just Being Impatient

Daily Express

Kota Kinabalu: Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan said he is not aware of an application submitted to the Registrar of Societies (RoS) here to register a new party on his behalf.

"Probably it was done by some of my men who could not wait...but personally I don't know about it because I am still on leave until January," he told Daily Express. He was asked for comment on a report Friday stating that an application for a new party linked to him was submitted to the RoS on Thursday.

It was learnt that the application for Parti Cinta Sabah or (Love Sabah Party) was submitted by a Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) Sabah leader who is in Dr Jeffrey's camp.

Dr Jeffrey said as far as he was concerned they are still waiting for a solution to the party's problem in Sabah and Sarawak.

"There is a solution to this problem in Sabah and Sarawak about which we expect an announcement to be made soon," he said.

Jeffrey fell out with the leadership of PKR due to their choice of the PKR Sabah liaison chairman, which resulted in him relinquishing his post as a Vice President and other important posts.

However, the party did not accept the resignations, including that of his colleague Christina Liew, who is also the party's former State deputy chairperson. Liew, when contacted earlier, also said she was not aware about any new party and that as far as she is concerned they are still with PKR.

Time And Tide Wait For No Man,Is Najib Running Out Of Time?

Hantu Laut

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has less then three years to put the BN house in order if he expects to win the next general elections.At the rate corruptions are being exposed in his administration and his languid action and no reaction, the damage could never be restored.

His 1 Malaysia is a good move to bring the people together but that was not the real cause of BN's misery.The people main grievances are corruptions, abuses of power and the extravagant lifestyle and display of opulence by the leaders and their families.

Malaysians are not blind to their surroundings, they can see, they can enumerate and they can sum up exactly what should be the net worth of those holding public offices.

The PKFZ scandal should by now have those responsible for the debacle sitting in the docks facing charges of impropriety and corruptions.So far, none have materialised. As the people wait impatiently to see those involved are brought to justice more cases of impropriety are exposed.

Former Premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi made the same grievous mistake.Riding high after the 2004 General Elections victory, he ignored the rising discontentment among the people.He was under the mistaken notion that his popularity would continue unfettered and his leadership unassailable.His failure to stamp out corruptions and abuse of power, as promised by him, was the main reason for the erosion of support.Is Najib going to make the same mistake?

The recent revelation of Negri Sembilan Menteri Besar abhorrently breaking the country's foreign exchange law by sending RM10 million out of the country using the hawala system (money changer) speaks volumes of the integrity of UMNO politicians holding high offices.They live in ivory towers and have become the untouchables.

Even if he earns the money legitimately, by the mere fact that he used the illegal channel reflects badly on his integrity, his position as menteri besar and UMNO as a whole.It wouldn't be wrong to say that any self-respecting politician would have resigned his position or be removed by the prime minister.UMNO seems to have no element of damage control.Unashamedly, makers of the law are also breakers of the law and shame seems to have no place in their political lexicon.

Najib's troubles are the makings of his own men.His every step forward is taken two steps backward by the action of his own men.

Arrogance and the lack of will to change seemed to be too deep-rooted in the BN, particularly UMNO, giving them a false sense of invincibility.

Three years is not too far away.It can go by in a flash.

Unless, Najib can change the people's perception, winning the next GE (General Elections) may be harder than what he imagines.

His main coalition partners MCA,Gerakan and MIC are in a shambles.

MCA, ravaged by infighting and leadership tussle is in a freefall and teetering on the edge of the abyss of total political wipeout.MCA's loss will be DAP's gain.

Time and tide wait for no man. Is Najib running out of time?

"Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You." Spoiled Malaysians

Hantu Laut

Malaysians are probably the most spoiled people on earth.Their subsidy mentality never seemed to end.Not only have they become too dependent on government's subsidies they have also become a thankless lot.

Maybe, Malaysians should be constantly reminded of John Kennedy's famous "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Malaysians insatiable appetite for subsidies and corruptions would one day bankrupt the nation.

The Malaysian government subsidised anything from sugar,cooking oil to cooking gas, petrol and diesel.The list is not exhaustive.There are many other crutches provided by the government and Malaysians have taken it as their God's given right and not see it as a privilege.

The sorry state of this subsidy mentality is the fault of politicians and the government.It has now become extremely difficult to remove the subsidies without offending the rakyat and a probable backlash in the next general elections which the government is trying best to avoid by succumbing to the political blackmail.

This wanting to please the rakyat, an overture now getting even more ridiculous by a new set of proposals and the likely implementation of "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" policy in the new pricing mechanism for petrol and diesel making it appears that the government has ran out of sound economic ideas.There was no indication how the government going to police the system.

Without any offence to honest Malaysians, with the low level of honesty in this country, the system would be opened to abuse.The same that happened to all the subsidised commodities, through smuggling to neighbouring countries, would happen again.Unwittingly, the government or for that matter Malaysian taxpayers are also subsiding the Thais and Indonesians bordering this country.

This time the poor would sell the cheap fuel to their richer friends and families.Unless, the government have in mind a wartime type of quota to stop abuse.It would than makes the country looks like a third world country run by a tin-pot dictator.

The Malaysian government is living dangerously.When the black gold stopped flowing from the asses of the earth on our soils, we would be so screwed financially, the whole economic structure may collapse in a flash.Almost 40 percent of our budget comes from oil revenue.

It's about time the government remove the pricking pain, once and for all, abolish all subsidies particularly petrol and diesel.The two-tier pricing system is not going to make anyone happier but would open the doors to more abuse.

If the government is seriously concerned about the welfare of the poor and those living below the poverty line, it's probably cheaper and makes more sense to give them direct benefits, putting cash directly in their hands rather than spoiling the whole nation with various kind of subsidies.

Proposal to introduce GST is a move in the right direction.This would make tax collections more efficient and compensate some of the losses through evasion and avoidance by legal manipulations.

I just came back from Vietnam and Cambodia.The price of premium petrol in Cambodia is US$1.01 per liter.Malaysia, a much richer country with better standard of living pampered its citizens with cheap petrol, diesel and hosts of other things.