Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, Barry Wain [best mystery novels of all time .txt] 📗

Dr. Mahathir was indignant that his critical comments were not being adequately reported in Malaysia. "Where is the press freedom?," he asked with a completely straight face in 2006.[58] The state of the press was about where he had left it three years earlier, firmly in the hands of the UMNO leader's political and corporate allies, who were reluctant to give a voice to critics inside or outside of the party. The reason "I am talking to myself", as Dr. Mahathir remarked, was due to the system of government ownership and control of the media he had imposed and consolidated over the years. Dr. Mahathir was merely getting a taste of his own medicine when he was blacked out, or severely restricted, in Malaysia's mainstream media.

Dr. Mahathir courted ridicule by insisting, "During my time, the press was quite free."[59] In fact, to enforce his rule, he had sacked editors for not toeing his line and tightened restrictions on a press that historically was required to partner the government in the country's development. He twice toughened the Printing Presses and Publications Act, allowing the home affairs minister unfettered powers to control the press. He also amended the Official Secrets Act to permit almost any document to be classified "secret", and to require offenders convicted of disclosing the contents to spend at least a year in jail. With printing companies obliged to obtain a licence annually, many who had invested in expensive machinery refused to handle alternative publications offering incisive commentaries and critical perspectives.[60] For instance, the printer of five years of Aliran Monthly, published by the Penang-based public interest group Aliran, abruptly withdrew its services in early 1999. Over the next seven months, four other printers terminated their relationships with Aliran, amid reports of government intimidation.[61]

Apart from temporarily suspending the publishing permits of three leading newspapers in 1988, Dr. Mahathir's administration had closed permanently three Malay-language publications — the magazines, Detik and al-Wasilah and the tabloid Eksklusif — whose popularity soared after Anwar Ibrahim's dismissal in 1998. The government's abuse of prominent dailies to discredit Anwar saw their circulation and revenue drop significantly, as readers went on strike against biased and distasteful reporting. TV3 suffered the same fate. In contrast, sales of Harakah, a biweekly owned by PAS that closely tracked Anwar's fall, quadrupled to more than 300,000. To curb the paper's growth, the government reduced its frequency from twice a week to twice a month and enforced the terms of its licence, which allowed it to sell only to party members.[62] The paper's editor was convicted on a charge of sedition. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists put Dr. Mahathir on its list of the Ten Worst Enemies of the Press in 1999, citing his stranglehold on the mainstream media and efforts to stifle the handful of opposition organs allowed to publish.[63]

The foreign press fared little better. In 1985, a correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review, a New Zealand national, became the first journalist ever to be prosecuted in Malaysia under the Official Secrets Act. Within a month, a Malaysian reporter was arrested on a similar charge.[64] The following year, the government expelled two Kuala Lumpur-based correspondents of the Asian Wall Street Journal and banned the paper for three months, but relented after a court ruled against the expulsions. Distribution of the Review, Journal, Newsweek, Time and the Economist was sometimes delayed, or blocked altogether, by ministerial edict. Malaysia in 1999 became the first Commonwealth country in 50 years to jail a reporter for contempt of court: Murray Hiebert, a Canadian on the Review's staff in Kuala Lumpur, served four weeks of a six-week prison sentence for an article he wrote about a local lawsuit.

In an attempt to skirt the onerous licensing laws, two young Malaysian journalists in 1999 had started the country's first online daily newspaper, Malaysiakini. Their gamble: To promote his Multimedia Super Corridor in 1997, Dr. Mahathir had promised foreign information and communications technology investors he would not censor the Internet, a decision he later regretted. Nevertheless, the government sought to impede the venture by resorting to back-door methods, such as barring Malaysiakini reporters from official functions, press conferences and other events.[65] A police raid on the paper's offices in 2003, after a complaint by UMNO's youth wing that a reader's letter was seditious, made a mockery of Dr. Mahathir's promise. But the paper was back online less than half a day later, its confiscated computers and servers replaced with makeshift and publicly donated equipment, and its reputation enhanced. Malaysiakini won the International Press Institute's 2001 Freedom Award for its independent coverage of Malaysia's political scene.

Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Dr. Mahathir turned in his hour of need to Malaysiakini whose staff he had once labelled "traitors". He began the first of what became periodic interviews with the comment, "I never liked Malaysiakini.com. It was very critical of me before."[66] After that, he made extensive use of cyberspace, including news websites and popular blogs, before starting his own blog — www.chedet.com — to get his anti-administration message across.[67] VCDs of several of his talks were sold at roadside stalls.

Improbably, as even the opposition conceded "a greater sense of freedom and openness" after Dr. Mahathir stepped down,[68] he contended that Abdullah's Malaysia had become a "police state".[69] In an open letter to Malaysians, the former prime minister said anyone attempting to organize an anti-Abdullah function would be hassled and forced to cancel it. Actions or threats to deter them, he said, included sacking, transfer to remote areas such as Sabah, cancellation of contracts, harassment by the banks, summons by the police or the Anti-Corruption Agency, detention and repeated interrogation. "A climate of fear has enveloped this country," he said.[70] In truth, Malaysia was never more than a quasi-democracy, and Dr. Mahathir had done almost nothing to encourage it to mature into the real thing. As he concentrated power in his office,