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

candidate to restore UMNO's relevance and credibility, and he agreed to the timetable. Najib, also defence minister until September 2008, was unable to bury allegations, despite his denials, linking him to corruption in big-ticket weapon systems purchases, and to the case of a Mongolian woman, the former lover of one of his closest advisers, who was murdered in Malaysia.

Lurching towards another round of bitter factional fighting, UMNO had reached what political scientist Khoo Boo Teik called a well-known political condition: "the leader is too weak to impose his will, the led are not yet strong enough to depose him".[8] In the run-up to the UMNO General Assembly in December, the shortage of prospective leaders — members with ability, experience and stature — was all too painfully obvious. The only one to raise his hand to contest the party presidency was Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the former finance minister, who was 71 and had been out of the limelight for 20 years. Among the younger generation, almost no one enjoyed the standing needed to lift UMNO — and Malaysia — out of the quagmire. Besides, it would be extremely difficult to obtain the backing of 30 per cent of UMNO's divisions, a necessary condition for anyone to challenge Abdullah for the party presidency.

While UMNO's dire predicament and the electoral success of Anwar Ibrahim's People's Front could be interpreted positively, as the deepening of democracy and the prospect of a two-party political system taking root in Malaysia, stasis or upheaval seemed a more immediate prospect. True, many Malaysians had voted across ethnic lines, encouraging the belief that race-based politics might be receding. But desperate UMNO elements, fearful of losing power, resorted to the familiar aggressive defence of Malay rights, and the party itself pushed a Malay-centric line trying to entice Parti Islam Se-Malaysia to desert the People's Front. The real concern was that racial polarization might begin anew.[9]

Morally vindicated by the royal commission into judicial appointments, Anwar prepared to return to Parliament after his ban for being convicted of abuse of power expired in April 2008. His confident prediction, that enough National Front members of parliament would defect to enable him to form a government by 16 September, the anniversary of the formation of Malaysia in 1963, rattled UMNO and numbed sections of the political and bureaucratic establishment. Anwar left no doubt that he intended to pursue those he held responsible for his persecution. He filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Agency alleging that the Inspector General of Police, Musa Hassan, and Attorney General Gani Patail had fabricated evidence when Anwar was assaulted at police headquarters after his arrest in 1998.[10] With Anwar dictating the political pace, tantalizing followers and taunting opponents with the suggestion that he would soon take power, a sense of unreality and apprehension gripped the country as he was arrested again for sodomy.

As if learning nothing from events ten years earlier, police, some wearing balaclavas, used a dozen cars to ambush Anwar near his home without giving him time to attend a pre-arranged interview, accompanied by his lawyers, at police headquarters. He was held overnight in a cell and left to sleep on a concrete floor. His accuser was Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 23, a university dropout who had worked for a few months on Anwar's staff. Anwar subsequently pleaded not guilty to a charge of sodomy and was granted bail. Calling the allegation a political conspiracy to prevent him from toppling the government, Anwar contested and won triumphantly a by-election in August for his old Permatang Pauh constituency, held since 1999 by his wife and vacated by her to allow his formal return to national politics. The poisonous political atmosphere, together with soaring inflation, undermined investor sentiment and sapped public confidence. Citing financial and political instability as larger concerns than the usual racial issues, social problems and crime, only 28 per cent of Malaysians were satisfied with the way things were at mid-year, down from 68 per cent five months earlier.[11]

Sniping from the sidelines as if he was just another citizen unhappy with the conduct of the country's political class, Dr. Mahathir accepted no responsibility for the threatening disorder that was, in fact, largely of his making. His failure to provide for the future leadership of Malaysia was entirely consistent with his penchant for political expediency and emphasis on the nation's hardware at the expense of its software. Musa Hitam, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Anwar Ibrahim were capable contenders in UMNO, but Dr. Mahathir ousted them all — Musa technically resigned — to safeguard his position and pursue his development agenda without hindrance. With access to the top blocked, other ambitious or talented members languished at lower levels, departed, or were deterred from joining the party in the first place. Far from grooming a dynamic successor, Dr. Mahathir succeeded only in cultivating a "broad-based assemblage of loyalists not predisposed to thinking against the grain".[12]

When he became prime minister, Abdullah had been astute enough to recognize popular demands to end the worst abuses and repair some of the harm inflicted by a couple of decades of one-man rule.[13] He was rewarded in 2004 with the biggest mandate in Malaysian history. But when he failed so dismally to meet the expectations he inflated so liberally, his administration was dumped even more heavily in 2008. A more active and competent prime minister, with a stronger political base, might have been able to push through some of the promised reforms, but not the man handpicked for the task by Dr. Mahathir.

Even when he chose Abdullah ahead of Najib to be his deputy in 1999, Dr. Mahathir largely put his personal interests ahead of the country's. His retrospective contention that Najib at 50 was too young in 2003 to become premier rang hollow, given that Najib entered Parliament at 22 and joined the government at 32, and actually had been active in politics longer than Abdullah. As Dr. Mahathir's mood soured and he became more cantankerous, he claimed that Abdullah had not been