MALAYSIA: Far Eastern Economic Review

Mahathir Reaches Out

Premier Mahathir Mohamad sounds a conciliatory tone and seeks a dialogue on Malay unity, but it may be too late to repair the damage
By S. Jayasankaran/KUALA LUMPUR
FEER Issue cover-dated February 1, 2001

MALAYSIA'S FEISTY PRIME MINISTER Mahathir Mohamad is feeling the heat. Opposition to his leadership from within the Malay community is challenging both his and his party's legitimacy. In a bid to stop the rot, the normally uncompromising Mahathir has called for talks with opponents and hinted that it may even be time for a new generation of leaders.

The move for dialogue amounts to a tacit recognition of the pluralism injected into Malaysian politics with the upheaval over the 1998 sacking and arrest of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim--now serving prison terms totalling 15 years. But the refusal of one of two invited opposition parties to come to the table with Mahathir's ruling United Malays National Organization also underlines the 75-year-old's waning influence as unifier of the nation.

Trying to calm the political waters, Mahathir touched on the leadership problem in a speech on January 22. "The current leaders may be rather too old to be at the helm and will have to make way for credible and efficient ones among the younger generation to carry on the Umno struggle and make us become a developed nation by 2020," he said. Mahathir has said that this will be his last term in office. The next general election is due by November 2004.

The suggestion of talks between Umno and the opposition came from an academic. In December, Ahmad Fauzi Basri, the deputy vice-chancellor of the Northern University of Malaysia, proposed that the country's three Malay-based parties sit down to thrash out their differences. "The survival of the Malays in the new millennium is more important than the political interests of the parties put together," Ahmad warned.

After the idea was vigorously endorsed by a party paper, Umno's management committee recommended that Mahathir meet his counterparts from the Islamic Party of Malaysia, or Pas, and Keadilan--led by Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Mahathir heeded the call, which says much about the pressure he is coming under to regain Malay support. For two years after the sacking of Anwar, Malays remain deeply split and some Umno officials have even suggested that Mahathir himself is the real reason for the loss of support.

So in January he invited Pas President Fadzil Noor and Wan Azizah for tripartite talks on Malay unity. Umno has always fought for unity among Malays, who comprise the majority (60%) of the country's 22 million people. With Malays as its cornerstone, Umno--the leading partner in the National Front coalition--embraced affirmative action to push poorer Malays to economic parity with richer minorities.

DEEPER PROBLEMS

But the idea that only Umno can protect Malays is flawed, the opposition says. Although they have differences in approach, both Keadilan and Pas back Malay special rights and affirmative action. They also have non-Malay partners that accept the programmes. It was the Anwar affair that prompted many Malays to part with Umno. Just over half of all Malay voters in Peninsular Malaysia sided with the Malay opposition in the last general election in 1999. Previously Umno took 70-80%.

It isn't even certain talks will take place. Keadilan turned down the invitation and no date was set for Pas and Umno to meet. It's hard to see what they could agree on. Analysts say Pas will seek concessions from the combative premier. "It looks like a sop to public sentiment, " says Khatina Nawawi, an economic and political analyst with SG Securities. "I don't think there will be any actual political outcome."

Umno is sure the talks are a good idea. "Why not?" says Shahrizat Jalil, an Umno federal minister. "We have to start somewhere and even if we agree on something like, say, keeping politics out of the mosques, we would have achieved something significant."

But in explaining her decision not to attend, Wan Azizah questioned the whole notion of Malay division as the problem. "Malay support has merely shifted to the opposition," she said in a statement. "The main issue today is a crisis of confidence in the leadership and other issues like the misuse of power, corruption, police brutality, weak economic management and a subservient judiciary."