Malaysia’s Greatest Crisis: Loss of National Pride and Unity

 

May 13, 2019

by Murray Hunter

Malaysia’s Greatest Crisis: Loss of National Pride and Unity

Love him or hate him, Mahathir Mohamed during his first stint as prime minister was able to instill a great sense of national pride and unity.

Mahathir went on a massive infrastructure drive. Most Malaysians were proud of the Penang Bridge that finally linked the island with the mainland. The North-South Highway project changed the nature of commuting up and down the peninsula. Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) was built and the development of Putra Jaya gave the country a new seat of administration.

Mahathir’s fait accompli was the building of the KLCC towers in central Kuala Lumpur, which were the tallest in the world at the time. These buildings are now the country’s major icon. Langkawi became a must holiday place for Malaysians. He brought elite Formula One motor racing and built a special purpose circuit for the event. He promoted the Tour de Langkawi as a local version of the Tour de France. He spared no expense on building massive new sporting complexes at Bukit Jalil to host the Commonwealth Games in 1998.

When the member nations of ASEAN abandoned the idea to build a regional car, Mahathir went alone, picking up old technology from Mitsubishi, creating the Proton Saga for better or worse although the national car project has been roundly criticized for losing hundreds of millions of dollars and costing more in terms of consumer lost opportunity.

Nonetheless, Malaysia became an Asian Tiger and Mahathir himself became an outspoken leader internationally. The country was proud of what it had achieved.  He knew the value of national symbols. The slogan Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can) was often heard along with the waving of the Jalur Gemilang (stripes of glory – Malaysian Flag) at public displays of national pride and unity.

The Barisan Nasional was a working government coalition that symbolized national unity through the make-up of the cabinet and its true multi-ethnic flavor. Ministers like Samy Vellu from the Malaysian India Congress and Ling Liong Sik from the Malaysian Chinese Association had high public profiles.

Although Mahathir was labeled as an ultra-conservative Malay, he worked with anyone who could help him fulfil his vision. Businessmen like Vincent Tan, Robert Kuok, Lim Goh Tong, Ananda Krishnan, and Tony Fernandez all had very close relationships with Mahathir. Malaysia Inc. was more important to Mahathir than Malay supremacy.

That’s now 30 years ago. The prime casualty has been national pride and unity. The generally positive perception of the Mahathir era drastically changed when he abruptly sacked his deputy Anwar Ibrahim from office in 1998. The accusations and conviction of Anwar for sodomy polarized the population. The goodwill that Mahathir had built up over more than 25 years in public life was put into question.

Although it was his intention to eliminate his nemesis Anwar from politics, he made sodomy a household word in a conservative society, taking luster away from his legacy.  He was painted by the Anwar propaganda machine and the alternative media as a tyrant with millions of dollars hidden away in foreign banks. In addition, two years of headlines and court reports about Anwar’s sodomy trial took away a sense of innocence, showing Malaysia’s ‘dark side’ with TV pictures showing a stained mattress being carted into and out of court every day on which Anwar was convicted of performing sodomy.

Under weak successors, belief in government further faltered. Respect for national leaders took another hit with Mahathir’s successor Ahmad Badawi painted as someone who slept on the job and enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle while many suffered economically. Badawi was painted by the PKR propaganda machine as corrupt. The dealings of his son-in-law and political adviser Khairy Jamaluddin were portrayed as corrupt nepotism.

Mahathir engineered an ungraceful exit for Badawi, replacing him with Najib Razak in 2009. The Najib premiership was tainted from the outset with rumors of murder and corruption. Najib’s wife Rosmah also became an object of ridicule, bringing respect for the institution of government to an all-time low.

However, it’s not just the corruption of politicians that destroyed respect for Malaysian institutions. The rakyat (people) have always wanted to believe in royalty. Even with stories about royal misdoings, there is no real talk of abolishing the monarchy. Whenever a member of one of the royal families acts in the interests of the rakyat, there has always been public praise and support. However, when members of a royal family act against the interests of the rakyat, the social media react.

Stories have been circulating for years about the misdeeds of Johor Royal Family. The current spat between Tunku Ismail, the Johor Crown Prince, commonly known as TMJ and Mahathir is extremely damaging for the royal institutions. Only the sedition act, a de facto lese-majeste law, is protecting the institution from much wider criticism.

Royal decorations and titles, VVIP service in government offices and special treatment for some citizens over others, shows a muddled Malaysia still clinging to the vestiges of feudalism. These artefacts are doing nothing to unite the country, a hangover from the old days of colonial class distinction.

However, the most powerful source of destruction for national pride and unity is the ketuanan Melayu (Malay Superiority) narrative which has become much more extreme. One of the basic assumptions is that bumiputeras — indigenous peoples – are the rightful owners of the land. From the point of view of the ketuanan proponents, land is not seen as a national symbol and non-Malays are excluded. This is a great barrier to developing any sense of national pride and unity.

The gulf between Malay and non-Malay has widened dramatically over the last two generations as Islam has grown into a major aspect of Malay identity. Citizens once celebrated their diverse ethnicities in harmony. Decrees made in the name of Islam now discourage this. No longer are Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, Deepavali and Christmas shared Malaysian experiences.

The way of life has become Islamized to the point where there is little place for other religions and traditions. Food, dress codes, entertainment, education, the civil service, government, police and the military are all Islamized.

Shared apprehensions about what Malaysia will be have caused the Chinese to close ranks. The influence of Ketuanan Melayu in government policy excludes non-Malay participation in many fields like education, civil service and the military, etc. The younger generation of Chinese today tend to see themselves as Chinese first and Malaysians second. Chinese schools promote language and a strong sense of Chinese culture over a Malaysian identity as a mass defence mechanism.

The New Economic Policy, put in place in 1969 after disastrous race riots as an affirmative action program for the majority Malays, has also done a disservice to those it was designed to help. The thesis of Mahathir’s book The Malay Dilemma was that Malays were basically lazy and needed help from the government is the faulty grounding assumption. The NEP is actually an attack on Malay self-esteem.

Rather than offering something spiritual, Islam has become a doctrine of conformity, where particular rights and rituals must legally be adhered to. Failure to do so in the case of not fasting during Ramadan can lead to punitive legal action.  Any views outside narrow social norms lead to heavy criticism. Just recently the Islamic authorities (JAKIM) in Selangor started investigating a discussion forum on women’s choice about wearing the hijab. Not just freedom of discussion is stifled, but also the right to be creative.

Islam has buried the principles of Rukun Negara (national principles), the supposed guiding philosophy of the nation. Rukun Negara was once a symbol of national pride and unity but has almost totally been replaced by a Doa (or prayer) before public events. A sense of nation has been sacrificed for the Islamization of public gatherings.

Today we see much less flag-waving during the Merdeka season. There are more divisional narratives on all ethnic sides. There is disappointment with the political system. Islam is seen by many as something overpowering rather than emancipating. People feel they need to conform to be accepted in society.

National pride and unity are at their lowest ebb since independence, where after 30 years of education the younger generations of Malays see Islam as more important than nationalism. Chinese and Indians are apprehensive about what Malaysia is turning into. Even the Orang Asli – the original inhabitants of the peninsula before the arrival of ethnic Malays from Indonesia — and non-Muslim indigenous people of Sabah and Sarawak identify as second-class.

Malaysia has travelled far away from the aspirations of Tunku Abdul Rahman when the Jalur Gemilang was raised for the first time over a free Malaya in 1957. Malaysia’s economic prosperity is relatively declining in the region and the nation is increasingly strangled by the need to conform. Malaysia appears to be a ship without a rudder, its reform agenda locked away under the Official Secrets Act.

The possibility of racial violence festering once again cannot be overlooked. Divisive narratives are being pushed until one day an unknown tipping point could be reached. The strong sense of social conformity, the exclusion of a national sense of ownership to all, the current totalitarian nature of authority and ketuanan Melayu narratives are a very dangerous mix.

Murray Hunter is a regular Asia Sentinel contributor. He is a development specialist and a longtime resident of the region.

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Lost Malaysian Hopes and the Pakatan Catch 22

April 10, 2019

by Murray Hunter

http://www.asisentinel.com

It took the Malaysian opposition more than a generation to topple the Barisan Nasional government, led by the now-discredited United Malays National Organization. Throughout mosques, coffee shops and markets in Malaysia, there has been an atmosphere of hope and anticipation by many for change that goes all the way back to when Mahathir Mohamed dismissed Anwar Ibrahim as deputy prime minister back in 1998 and jailed him in a trial regarded universally as trumped up.

From that day on Anwar Ibrahim became synonymous for reform in Malaysia. The charismatic opposition leader, from jail and out, managed to unite a wide diversity of NGOs and most of the opposition parties against the Barisan. But it took 20 years and reports by the Sarawak Report, the Wall Street Journal, Asia Sentinel and others to expose what is now known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal which tainted Prime Minister Najib Razak as a complete crook and his wife as a grasping harridan. Najib shut down critical parts of the local media and sacked the Attorney General before charges could be laid against him.

Mahathir, in quasi-private life through two administrations, once again mobilized forces to remove Najib, creating Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) with the help of defectors from UMNO and joining the Pakatan Harapan coalition led from prison by his nemesis Anwar.

The 2018 election became a Mahathir-vs-Najib contest, where Najib was almost universally expected to hold onto power. There seemed to be an air of disillusionment with the electoral process and apathy during the campaign. However, voter turnout was more than 82 percent. The Pakatan Harapan coalition defeated Najib, who was prevented from fleeing the country in a private aircraft for Indonesia. The surprised public instantaneously became euphoric, celebrating in the streets. Many Malaysians believed they would now get the reform and change they had long hoped for.

The Pakatan Catch 22

However, the defeat of the Barisan exposed a very complex electorate. Different groups of voters made their decisions for different reasons. Non-Malays saw the removal of the Barisan as the end of a dark apartheid era in which every citizen would be regarded as equal, as was promised by sections of the Harapan manifesto. In contrast, many urban, professional and middle-class Malays hoped that Mahathir would clean up the mess the country was in. Voters in rural Malaysia, particularly in Kelantan and Terengganu, didn’t switch at all. They went to the rural Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia, or PAS. The small northern state of Perlis remained staunchly Barisan.

There is now a deep polarization in the Malaysian electorate between those who want a Malaysian Malaysia and those who want a Malay Malaysia. This is a massive dilemma for the reform government.

A major part of the electorate sees reform as a threat to special privileges that they have received since the advent of the New Economic Policy, an affirmative action policy for the Malay majority, in 1971. Three generations of education and political narrative have created this sense of privilege, which is deeply engrained in rural Malays. These sentiments are being played upon politically to the point where the government has had to stall decisions about child marriage and reverse its decision to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

In addition, the Pakatan government is being subjected to pressure from sections of the Malaysian royalty, which led to the reversal in ratifying the Rome Statute, a prelude to joining the International Criminal Court, and the resignation of Johor Chief Minister Osman Sapian.

The government now faces a situation in which any future policy decisions and reforms must be framed from a Bumiputera perspective and agreed in royal circles. This is particularly the case as the government is extremely slow with any electoral reform, which would effectively weaken opposition to policy reform, through adopting the principle of “one vote, one value.”  Without electoral reform, any policy reversals will favor the newly formed UNMO-PAS alliance with its narrative pandering to the rural Malay electorate.

The Pakatan government needs to very quickly undertake electoral reform to counter the strength of the conservative electorate. Currently, a rural vote can be worth anything up to four times an urban one. It is this imbalance that is providing UMNO-PAS with a powerful base from which to prevent the government from pushing through any reform agenda.

However, the latest news on electoral reform is that the Election Commission and UNDP will only make a joint study about the electoral system in the coming months, far too long for something that is threatening the very long-term livelihood of the government.

More of the same

With this inaction on electoral reform, it could be argued that the May 9 general election was not about vital reform needed in the country, but rather replacing one leadership group with another. In many respects, the Pakatan government is acting just like its predecessor. The reform report handed down by the Council of Eminent Persons (CEP) has been suppressed by the Official Secrets Act, indicating the new government doesn’t place a high priority on transparency.

The Sedition Act has not been repealed and is in fact being used to prosecute political opponents. The Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) still cannot decide who to prosecute independently. Cabinet ministers have had corruption charges quickly dismissed against them. Political appointees are still being appointed to government-linked companies and statutory bodies.

Mahathir’s Parti Bersatu and Parti Keadilan Rakyat, the two Malay parties in the Pakatan Harapan coalition, both strongly resemble UMNO right down to the internal politics and squabbles. With defectors from UMNO freely running across to Parti Bersatu, the parties are looking more like a new UMNO.

In defense of the Pakatan Government, Mahathir has worked hard to form an operational government from a broad group of parties. However many within the cabinet are very inexperienced, and there is a strong sense of inertia and apathy coming from the largely ethnic Malay civil service, with stories of sabotage against the new government.

Even with Mahathir back in power, changing institutions that have been inefficiently built and harboring wasteful cronies of the previous government is very difficult. However, what is sad to see is that many of these cronies are still being reappointed to positions of power.

The old guard still is very clearly in charge of the new government, which has a “back to the future” quality about it. Old rivalries continue. The Anwar-Mahathir power struggle continues from the 1990s. Gamesmanship seems to be a trademark of the new government. There are many disappointed with not being given plumb jobs and important positions within the new administration.

Consequently, the Pakatan ministry is more of a transition than reform one. The country must mark time until Anwar takes over from Mahathir to become prime minister.  The country is waiting for someone who currently has no position in government. The country is waiting for someone they don’t really know very well.

Anwar Ibrahim was the education minister who introduced Malay medium at schools, which many claimed was a major setback to the country’s education system. Anwar advocated IMF intervention in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Anwar is well known for saying different things to different audiences.

From Anwar’s actions and stands taken over the years, he seems to be more a pragmatist rather than a visionary leader. Most of the policies he has advocated are populist, even though they may not be in Malaysia’s best interests such as the abolition of the goods and services tax that Najib put in place, denying the government a critical source of revenue, and maintenance of fuel subsidies. Anwar’s politics have been high in gamesmanship at a time the country really needs to get down and focus on the social, economic, financial, and institutional problems facing it.

As a sideshow, Najib, still active despite charges against him for looting 1MDB, is looking for a political solution to his problems rather than a legal one. Current electoral demographics favor him. The UMNO-Pas alliance will enable Najib to skillfully exploit the insular side of the electorate. The Pakatan government’s mistakes have shown up electorally in the last two by-election results.

Najib also knows, if he can say out of jail, that he will not be facing Mahathir in the next election. Most probably he will be facing Anwar, who has made many strategic blunders over the years in election campaigns.

Malaysians are very quickly losing hope in their new government, especially with the Malay-Malaysian narratives that are creeping into the arena. With the Pakatan government waiting for its new leader and its current leader going back to his old policies of the 1980s and 90s with flying cars, the Singapore aggravation, looking East, privatization and a secretive executive government, real economic and market reforms are not on the agenda, even though some of these reforms are very doable.

Institutionalized discrimination appears to be strengthening rather than being eliminated. The new narratives Pakatan members talked about during the election have all disappeared. The national mindset is going back to an insular view of the world.

Murray Hunter (murrayhunter58@gmail.com) is a development specialist and longtime contributor to Asia Sentinel

 

Singapore: Indonesia’s Money Laundromat

March 26, 2019

By: John Berthelsen

https://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/singapore-indonesia-money-laundromat/

On March 18, Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati announced that the country’s Directorate General of Taxation will go after Indonesian wealth parked overseas, saying data indicate Indonesians have illegally moved Rp1.3 quadrillion (US$91.3 billion) worth of assets outside of the country.

Sri Mulyani doesn’t have far to hunt, and multiple sources say her US$91 billion figure is a relatively paltry portion of the total. She can send her investigators to Singapore, an hour and 50 minutes away by any one of 35 flights a day, where, according to a 2014 Cornell University Southeast Asia Program study, at least 39,000 Indonesians worth US$4.1 million each were residing “semipermanently” and had stored non-home financial assets. The study put the total amount of Indonesian money in Singapore at a minimum of US$93 billion. According to one study, however, as much as an astonishing US$380 billion has been spirited out of Indonesia alone – 40 percent of Singapore’s total banking receipts.

Among the other dictators, crooks, strongmen and satraps who are believed to have deposits – or have had – in the Singaporean banking system are Zimbabwe’s 95-year-old former President Robert Mugabe, the late Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos, the jailed Taiwanese President Chen Shui Bian, the disgraced former French Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and many more.

On March 17, 2009 – a decade ago – this reporter was present when the Burmese junta leader Thein Sein, the head of what was then one of the world’s most repressive and poverty-stricken countries, flew into Singapore for a ceremony in which an orchid was named for him in the island republic’s magnificent botanical gardens. Another was named for Thein Sein’s wife. The common wisdom in Singapore is that the orchid honor was bestowed because of the amount of money Myanmar’s generals had laundered out of their benighted country and deposited in Singapore’s banks.

The volume of hot money that moves through Singapore’s banking system, unimpeded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and protected by a comforting tangle of banking secrecy laws, seems at odds with the country’s public stance of incorruptibility. An attempt to fix a parking ticket would have the miscreant hauled off to jail.

The late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, confronted in 1986 with corruption on the part of Housing Minister Teh Cheang Wan, who was integral in helping him transform the country from British colony, refused to look away. Teh committed suicide rather than face trial.

For decades, Indonesia has been in a half-hearted war to repatriate its money, at one point in 2007 blocking the delivery of Indonesian sand used to expand Singapore’s coastline in an effort to force the island nation to agree to an extradition treaty to get back bankers who stole US$13.5 billion from 48 ailing banks during the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis and moved the money into Singaporean banks. They have never succeeded.

In the 2008 global financial meltdown, Indonesia’s Century bank failed, with US$1.5 billion allegedly stolen by the bank’s president, Robert Tantular, according to lawsuits filed in Singapore and Mauritius. The Indonesian Bank Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is designed to provide an insurance cover for failing banks, allegedly poured in another US$750 million. In the end, the bank was recapitalized and renamed twice more, with massive fund flows out of the country again to Singapore. Tantular was prosecuted for the theft, but inexplicably was freed in December 2018 with half his time served, provoking a new investigation by the country’s Corruption Eradication Commission.

With global watchdogs increasingly cracking down on Switzerland, Singapore has become known as the go-to bolt hole for money flowing in from Cyprus, Russia, Dubai and Qatar. It is an emerging destination for private wealth management – a code word for hidden money. Its banks are known as among the safest in the world. It has never had a bank failure, although it shut down two Swiss subsidiaries during the mess created by Malaysia’s huge 1Malaysia Development Bank scandal.

As authorities have put pressure on Swiss authorities to open the doors to the alpine nation’s bank records, Singapore has developed its banking secrecy laws to protect money flows, blocking regulations developed by the 36-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on publication of bank customer information. According to a 2017 Boston Consulting Group report, these tight banking secrecy laws had attracted as much as US$1.1 trillion in foreign funds into the banking system.

The access by less-than-respectable money seems to have reached its apex with the long-running 1MDB scandal, during which now-deposed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his confederate, Low Taek Jho, spirited billions of dollars through the Singaporean system. Najib famously moved US$681 million sent to him by Jho Low through the Kuala Lumpur-based Ambank in 2013, using part of the money to finance the successful 2013 election won by the Barisan Nasional, and then moved the remainder back out to subsidiaries of Swiss banks, both of which were suspended from doing business in Singapore.

The full story of the magnitude of theft from 1MDB and the money’s passage through Singaporean banks is told in two recent books, “The Billion-Dollar Whale by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, and The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose by Clare Rewcastle Brown. Both books tell a ring-around-the-rosy story of billions of dollars that moved with impunity from a long string of shell companies set up in Caribbean hidey holes, zipping through the Singapore banking system without any problems until authorities in the United States and other jurisdictions started calling attention to the process.

As Brown writes, “Ironically, at a time when our ability to connect and communicate instantaneously should enable us through forensic accounting to track suspicious transactions and assure there is no hiding place for them, things have got worse, not better. As long as national legal systems are limited in their ability to monitor and supervise extra-territorial transactions, and as long as international cooperation remains ineffective and deficient, then sending money offshore will continue to deprive national treasuries of the revenues they need, leaving domestic populations worse off and in many cases impoverished,”

There is no better proof of that than the billions of dollars that have moved out of Indonesia, and the ease with which it has been hidden in Singapore or moved on to other obscure corners of the world.

 

Malaysia’s Mahathir sidelines Coalition Partners

February 21,2019

February 20, 2019

By: John Berthelsen

https://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/malaysia-mahathir-overpowers-coalition/

Dr M is a no-nonsense and straight-forward man — something that the Chinese are well aware of’

There is growing uneasiness in Malaysia that the ethnic chauvinism of the United Malays National Organization under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad during his first 22 years in power is rising to overpower the platform of multiracialism and ending political corruption that defeated the country’s founding coalition last May 9.

Thus fears are growing that letting Mahathir lead the Pakatan Harapan coalition means the founding parties – Anwar’s PKR, the DAP and Amanah – are likely to soon find the entire camel in the tent with them despite their Reformasi platform.

Mahathir has come to dominate the coalition with ideas that drove the Barisan Nasional, the ruling national coalition, and UMNO, its main component, during his reign from 1981 to 2003. He has pushed through yet another national car plan even though his previous one, the ill-fated Proton, lost billions of dollars. He is squabbling with Singapore and backing the concept of Ketuanan Melayu over the objections of coalition partners, the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s own Parti Keadilan Rakyat, who favor a multi-ethnic government.

He has accepted eight former members of parliament who have crossed from the corruption-ridden and imploding UMNO into his Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, with more possibly to come from the  East Malaysia state of Sabah.

“There’s a lot of resentment over the acceptance of these eight UMNO bozos and they are possibly going to accept several more in coming weeks,” said an annoyed Kuala Lumpur-based political analyst. “The coalition partners have expressed unhappiness, the same way the minor parties expressed unhappiness during the Barisan days – muted and sheepishly. None have the balls to vigorously stand up on principle against Mahathir.”

Mahathir, by far the country’s most popular political figure at age 93, is having none of it. He said earlier this week that he wouldn’t hesitate to abandon his coalition partners “if they are not loyal to the country.”

When the country’s 14th general election was held last year, Mahathir’s Parti Bersatu emerged with just 13 seats, compared with 47 for Anwar’s PKR and 42 for the DAP, with a handful of lesser parties making up the rest. With the defections from UMNO, Mahathir’s party has nearly doubled its seats in parliament to 22.

Last October, Kadir Jasin, a former newspaper editor and longtime Mahathir ally, said as many as 40 former UMNO members might cross over to Parti Bersatu. That set alarm bells ringing, with the other coalition members, particularly Lim Kit Siang of the Democratic Action Party, raising a furor and putting a temporary stop to it. If indeed Parti Bersatu were to take in 40 additional members, that would make it by far the strongest party in the coalition.

Despite some concerns over nonagenarian forgetfulness, the Prime Minister appears to be as headstrong in his new incarnation – despite swearing fealty to democratic principles during the campaign to oust former Prime Minister Najib Razak – as he was during his reign as premier from 1981 to 2003.

Bloodletting in the new ruling coalition appears to have claimed several scalps including Nurul Izzah, Anwar’s daughter, who quit as vice president of PKR in December along with giving up her chairmanship of Keadilan Penang, reportedly in disgust over the political situation. Rafizi Ramli, the party secretary general, also appears to have been sidelined, with former Selangor Chief Minister Azmin Ali – a favorite who was appointed economics minister by Mahathir — now playing a leading role in Anwar’s own party.

Whether Anwar can emerge from the two-year sabbatical he promised is also unclear. He is not trusted by many including some in PKR, and thus the squabble for party primacy between Azmin and Rafizi.

Mahathir has never made a secret of his insistence of ethnic Malay primacy that characterized UMNO during his first 22 years in power. Since the election, he has repeatedly defended the concept of Malay rights, saying at a party assembly in December that “Malays feel that they must be protected and they feel this could only be done by their own race through politics. That is why a party comprising Malays and led by them needs to be formed.”

But the last time Mahathir tried that, he ended up with school systems and universities that simply passed Malays through without educating them, with a civil service that was choked with unneeded employees, with companies that carried dead weight on their payrolls.

It was Mahathir who sought to create a cadre of 100 super-rich bumis who in turn would help rural Malays into prosperity, much the way he envisioned driving the country into industrialization through massive projects. But once the privileged got rich, there was little incentive to share it with the kampungs, the Malay rural villages. Many of the state-backed companies eventually collapsed and for decades had to be supported by government institutions.

Anwar has been careful to say that Mahathir has changed his stripes. But Parti Bersatu bills itself as an “older and better version of UMNO” with no need to accept non-Malays. That appears to be a recipe for disaster.  It was UMNO in the fading days of the Barisan’s reign that kept the now-disgraced Najib Razak in power through massive bribes to party members.

Pakatan Harapan has made some progress towards multiracial government, with a highly respected ethnic Indian – Tommy Thomas – as attorney general, and Lim Guan Eng, the effective Chinese chief minister of Penang, as finance minister. It appears to be making steps towards cleaning up the judiciary, and it has arrested Najib and his grasping wife as well as others. But the coalition hasn’t helped its reformasi reputation with the discovery by opponents that at least five officials appear to have faked their university degrees.

But there is little doubt that there is an elemental inconsistency between Mahathir’s view of governance and that of the other component parties, and that Mahathir, through the sheer force of his will, is winning.

Nine months ago, country was euphoric and jubilant,” a disillusioned source said. “Today people refer to the new PH Government as ‘the bloody government.’  No more of this ‘New Malaysia’ stuff. You bring that up, people whack the shit out of you. Because there is no New Malaysia. There is only one Malaysia – the Malaysia that we have all allowed to exist, the old Malaysia, where corruption, cronyism, abuse of power is all justifiable in the name of national unity.”

Mahathir Using Economic Council to Edge Anwar Out in favour of Azmin Ali?

February 16, 2019

February 15, 2019

192

By: Yusoff Rawther

A glance at the newly-announced lineup of Malaysia’s Economic Action Council (EAC) poses more questions than answers. It was formed to respond and take action in addressing economic issues. Objectives include stimulating economic growth, ensuring fair distribution of wealth and improving the well-being of the people as well as focusing on issues related to cost of living, labor, poverty and home ownership.

What is its relevance? It sounds eerily like a cabinet within a cabinet, and at a transitionary period, it looks like a redundant idea that will prove to be merely a political tool.

In less than a year since assuming the premiership, the 93-year-old Mahathir Mohammad has flip-flopped on various issues, most obviously his firmly stated assurance in May 2018 that the victorious Pakatan Harapan coalition would not be accepting turncoats from the losing United Malays National Organization.

Yet, along with the announcement of the creation of the economic action body,  Mahathir happened to embrace seven former UMNO MPs into his own Parti Pribumi Bersatu, an act of betrayal to the people of Malaysia. UMNO was thoroughly discredited as a party corrupt to its very roots – by MPs who were kept loyal to the previous premier, the disgraced Najib Razak, by outright bribes.

Anwar Ibrahim has been unceremoniously left out from the EAC, an indication that Mahathir is once again vying to divert as much power and attention towards the lesser known and underperforming Minister of Economic Affairs, Mohamad Azmin Ali, the former chief minister of Selangor and an ambitious pretender for the leadership of the coalition.

Aside from the fact that the council’s existence shows failure on behalf of the prime minister to appoint qualified people to the cabinet, if we are to accept the premise that the council should exist, the right thing to do is to invite the premier-in-waiting to be a member in a move to demonstrate your confidence in your designated successor to the voters as well as giving Anwar a role to play in contributing to the agenda set forth in the EAC’s charter. Malaysians should beware lest Mahathir smuggles old failings into the mix whilst our attention is held elsewhere.

The political heavy lifting was done by Anwar, who from his prison cell pulled a lax opposition and the complaining class into the fight alongside his supporters to create the conditions for change. Conditions that proved vital in the overthrow of the Barisan Nasional regime.

It is evident that something more than elections are necessary to create a genuine new dispensation of sustainable democratic good governance.

 Creating the EAC and sidelining the PM-in-waiting is not a good indicator of that. Authoritarian rule is not just about figureheads. They use power th to maintain themselves is institutionalized and embedded in deep structures of privilege that corruptly deliver a nation’s bounty into the hands of a chosen few.

If Anwar Ibrahim is the icon for democracy, then Mahathir is the icon and spokesperson of the embedded structures of inequity.

As the principal architect of genuine reform,  to sweep aside the structures of authoritarian control and the inequity they beget, Anwar’s reform agenda seeks to eliminate  corruption, cronyism and nepotism, the elements of a bygone era.

It is the diligence and energy Anwar applies to promoting an alternate vision of good governance, one and of a free and competitive Malaysian economy and harmonious, multiracial society that  made him an important voice not only in Malaysia but around the world. Anwar has spent his career speaking for and articulating an alternative agenda of politics.

As a Deputy Prime Minister during the Asian Financial Crisis I988, Anwar came very close to dismantling the Mahathirist version of crony capitalism when he decided to implement an IMF style austerity program, suspend big-bulge infrastructure investment, and force big businessmen to take care of their own debts.

Anwarnomics promises to do away with state-backed racism. It promises to be inclusive, rules-based and competition-driven with a large, well-funded social safety net and he has reiterated time and again the need for uncompromising reforms.

Here are some of the things he has advocated for, long before the formation of the EAC:

Malaysia’s economic policies should be inclusive and to dismantle obsolete policies such as the New Economic Policy. Positive.

• discrimination policies must be based on freedom, justice, and equity.
• A sustainable economy is not one that is mainly driven by consumer spending fueled by high level household debt. “We cannot build a better life for our people if they need two to three jobs just to make ends meet. That is bad economics… even worst social policy.”
• Affirmative actions taken must be based on needs.
• It is important to enhance investment, trading and economic ties with China and India which are the engine of growth for global economy.
• Social protection and poverty eradication remain central to the effort to ensure a better life for all.
• Greater transparency and public participation is key in ensuring efficiency of social programs, to identify dubious programs, reduce duplication and waste of resources.
• Economic policies to lure foreign direct investment must not neglect any region or community in the country. It is not a zero-sum game. If we choose to embark on pro-market reforms, it should not be an excessive capitalistic notion ignoring the plight of poor and marginalized.

Given the facts, it is only fair to question Mahathir’s  motives  in creating the EAC while failing to include the next Prime minister.

Malaysia is rich in resources and possibilities. Change will require more than just elections, it requires dismantling the institutional structures of inequity, most of all it will depend upon building the strength and capacity of civil society, the plethora of organizations and associations by which ordinary people hold their governments to account.

Up Periscope: Malaysia’s Submarine Scandal Resurfaces

February 13, 2019

February 11, 2019

By: John Berthelsen

https://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/up-periscope-malaysia-sub-scandal-resurfaces/

What, until the US$4.5 billion 1MDB affair, had been Malaysia’s biggest scandal, has reappeared – the US$1.2 billion purchase of submarines under then-Defense Minister Najib Razak at the turn of the century, a lurid tangle of blackmail, bribery, murder, influence peddling, misuse of corporate assets and concealment.

Crusading French lawyer William Bourdon and his associate, Appoline Cagnat, are currently in Malaysia discussing the affair with Attorney General Tommy Thomas, according to local media. Bourdon and his associates compiled much of the evidence about the purchase at the turn of the decade for Suaram, the Malaysian good-government NGO, but he was kicked out of the country for attempting to follow up the case by Najib’s government.

Credit: Malaysiakini

The matter has remained in limbo since 2012 as the Najib government pulled out all the stops to keep it buried. Now, however, after the May 9, 2018 election that turned out the Barisan Nasional and brought the Pakatan Harapan coalition to power, the new government has shown considerable zeal in bringing long-buried scandals to the light.

The Scorpene submarines were purchased by Malaysia from subsidiaries of the state-owned weapons manufacturer DCN although there is no evidence that Malaysia ever needed submarines and in fact they had to be based in East Malaysia because the waters around Peninsular Malaysia were too shallow for them to operate efficiently.

According to evidence compiled by Asia Sentinel in a long series of articles that won the 2013 Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting from the Society of Publishers in Asia – Asia’s version of the Pulitzer Prize – the transaction steered a €114.96 million (US$130.3 million at current exchange rates) kickback to the United Malays National Organization through a private company called Perimekar Sdn Bhd.

Perimekar was wholly owned by Abdul Razak Baginda and its principal shareholder was his wife, Mazlinda, a close friend of Najib’s wife Rosmah Mansor.  He was then the head of a Malaysian think tank called Malaysian Strategic Research.

DCN officials hinted that Perimekar had come into existence only to facilitate the kickback transaction. Documents note that “Perimekar was a limited liability company with a capital of MR5 million (€1.4 million) of which 1 million is available. It was created in August 1999 … it has no record of sales during 2000. Its ownership is in the process of restructuring.”

Razak Baginda was a close friend of Najib Razak, who went on to be Malaysia’s prime minister and would be booted out of office in disgrace over the 1MDB scandal, which later supplanted the Scorpene scandal by far.

Another €36 million was directed to an obscure company in Hong Kong named Terasasi Hong Kong Ltd., whose principal officers were listed as Razak Baginda and his father and which appeared to be nothing more than a name on an accounting firm’s wall. According to an August, 2017 story, Razak Baginda was charged by French prosecutors with “active and passive complicity in corruption.”

According to the documents made available to Asia Sentinel, some of the misdeeds appear to have taken place with the knowledge of top French government officials including then-foreign Minister Alain Juppe and with the consent of former – and current — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Top Thales officials been named in news stories in Paris as having suborned bribes in the matter. Najib was also named as the recipient.   However, given the involvement of such individuals as Juppe and others, it seems unlikely that the matter will be carried further in France despite a statement last July by French Ambassador to Malaysia Frédéric Laplanche that “Cooperation between France and Malaysia (on the investigation) is very good.”

As Asia Sentinel reported in 2012, the payment appears to have been in violation of the OECD Convention on Bribery, which France ratified on June 30, 2000. On Sep. 29, 2000, DCNI, a DCN subsidiary, “took corrective actions” after France joined the bribery convention. Contracts concluded after that date were to be routed to companies held by Jean-Marie Boivin, DCN’s former finance chief, headquartered in Luxembourg and Malta respectively.

Among the documents is one that shows Boivin paid to send Razak Baginda on a jaunt to Macau with his then-girlfriend, Altantuya Shaariibuu, a jet-setting Mongolian national who was later murdered by two of Najib’s bodyguards in gruesome fashion in October of 2006 and whose body was blown up with C4 explosives, possibly to destroy the fetus of the child she said she was carrying when she was killed.

In a handwritten note found in her hotel room after she had been murdered, Altantuya said she was blackmailing Razak Baginda for US$50,000, although she didn’t say why. However, according to the documents, she had considerable knowledge of the purchase of the submarines from her relationship with the defense analyst. And, although Najib has repeatedly denied it and sworn on the Quran that he had never met her, there is evidence that he had not only met her but had an affair with her before Razak Baginda.

Two of Najib’s bodyguards, Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar, the latter of whom left the country when he was temporarily freed by an appeals court and remains in Australia, were tried and convicted of her murder in a long-running trial that appeared to be carefully orchestrated to make sure nobody above the two bodyguards was ever named despite the fact that one of them, in a sworn statement, said they were to be paid MYR50,000 to carry out the killing. Musa Safri, Najib’s aide de camp, was identified as the individual who designated Azilah and Sirul to pick up Altantuya. But there is no evidence he was ever questioned by the police about his involvement.

In June 2018, the then-newly appointed Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun told reporters that an investigation into Altantuya’s death would be reopened, based on a new police report submitted by Altantuya’s father. So far there has been little public indication of progress.

 

The story, which was considerably bigger than just the Scorpenes, in essence began when Najib was appointed Defense Minister in Mahathir’s cabinet in 1991 and embarked on a massive buildup of the country’s military, arranging for the purchase of tanks, Sukhoi jets, coastal patrol boats – and submarines, all of which appear to have been mired in corruption and kickbacks that enriched Najib and UMNO. French, German, Swedish, Russian and Dutch manufacturers in turn went looking for the most effective cronies of the Malaysian leadership to help them out.

“The major defense contracts in Malaysia as in other countries require substantial money transfers to individuals and/or [political] organizations,” according to documents taken from DCN’s files by French investigators. “In Malaysia, other than individuals, the ruling party [UMNO] is the largest beneficiary. Consultants [agents or companies] are often used as a political network to facilitate such transfers and receive commissions for their principals.”