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

abolition of appeals to the Privy Council in Britain in 1985, was necessary, the adoption of new nomenclature aroused suspicion. The Supreme Court reverted to its original name, the Federal Court, and the lord president became the chief justice. Seemingly innocent, the renaming exercise could be perceived as further subtle diminution of the prestige of the judiciary.[80]

Later, Dr. Mahathir said it would have made no difference if a full panel of the Supreme Court had considered the appeal against the judgment outlawing UMNO. He said UMNO "wanted nothing more than the validation of the election results making me president and Ghafar Baba deputy president".[81] Without explaining how he would have dealt with two UMNOs, had the appeal by the UMNO 11 been successful, Dr. Mahathir said that even if the full bench had heard the appeal, "I'm quite sure that I'll somehow or other manage to stay on as leader of UMNO."[82] As it was, Hamid, Dr. Mahathir's choice for lord president, handed him a clear-cut victory.

In March 1988, before the final court decision on the legality of UMNO, the government had amended the Societies Act to facilitate the transfer of the old party's assets to New UMNO. All New UMNO had to do was adopt a constitution that closely resembled the old one and admit a majority of UMNO's members. The amendments contained disincentives for dissidents tempted to cause trouble. If those who did not join the new party objected formally to the assets transfer, they could be held liable for their share of the old party's debt. Dr. Mahathir made sure his most committed opponents, especially those associated with the attempt to form UMNO Malaysia, were not admitted to New UMNO. The rest he courted in a nation-wide membership drive, backed with the full armory of government patronage, as well as the usual coercive measures to discourage intransigence.

Tengku Razaleigh formed a new party but was not permitted to use the name UMNO. He settled for Semangat '46, or Spirit of '46, in the hope that it would evoke the Malay community fervour of UMNO's founding year. A dissident strategy to stage rolling by-elections got off to a promising start in mid-1988 when a Musa ally, former welfare minister Shahrir Abdul Samad, resigned to re-contest his seat in Johore as an independent. He whipped the New UMNO candidate backed by the National Front machine, on a platform of rebuking Dr. Mahathir over the sacking of Salleh Abas. But any hope of spurring disaffection and building momentum dissipated when the New UMNO candidate pipped the Spirit of '46 standard bearer in an overwhelmingly Malay Johore state constituency five months later. After the National Front easily retained a Malay-majority parliamentary seat in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur in January 1989 — with a Malaysian Chinese Association novice against an old-style, tainted Spirit of '46 candidate — the rebel offensive was effectively dead.

Although Dr. Mahathir suffered a heart attack in January and required immediate surgery, he had emerged as the undisputed victor from the UMNO power struggle. Musa and many of his followers were enticed to join Dr. Mahathir's UMNO without any promise of reward, leaving Tengku Razaleigh commanding only 12 seats in the House of Representatives, and with narrowing prospects. Dr. Mahathir continued to discard anyone whose loyalty was suspect, demanding fidelity to his leadership above other qualities. "I don't need intelligent, honest, hard-working people in Parliament," he told Mohamed Tawfik Ismail, a first-term parliamentarian and Musa ally from Johore he was about to axe. Urging Tawfik to go into business, he said, "My members of parliament should stand when I enter the chamber, thump the table and shout, 'Long Live Mahathir'."[83] As political scientist Gordon Means observed, after a couple of years of turmoil, "For political friend and foe alike, Dr. Mahathir had become the epicenter of politics."[84]

Despite the instillation in him of five coronary bypass arteries, Dr. Mahathir returned to the scene after several months convalescing with no erosion of his authority. With winner's disdain, he continued to enhance the power of the executive branch. Parliament passed amendments to the ISA and other laws on emergency powers, crime and drug prevention to remove judicial review. In the 1990 election, Dr. Mahathir led the National Front to another comfortable victory, winning 127 of the 180 seats, against Spirit of '46 in separate alliances with both PAS and the Democratic Action Party. Although the National Front was floored in Tengku Razaleigh's home state of Kelantan, losing all state and federal seats, Dr. Mahathir retained his two-thirds majority in Parliament. After Dr. Mahathir scored his greatest electoral triumph in 1995, capturing 162 of 192 parliamentary seats, a demoralized Tengku Razaleigh and supporters disbanded Spirit of '46 and drifted back to UMNO. According to a joke doing the rounds, UMNO stood for Under Mahathir No Opposition.

Similarly, Dr. Mahathir concentrated power at the top of UMNO, particularly in the presidency. His display of "brute strength" in routing the dissidents — as Musa Hitam described it — marked Dr. Mahathir as not only a superior leader and strategist, but also an unforgiving one. Seeped into the psyche of every UMNO ladder-climber was the gnawing fear that to make what could be construed as a move against Dr. Mahathir invited political oblivion. If he could destroy Musa and Tengku Razaleigh, he would not hesitate to snuff out their own political careers — and the good life enjoyed by them and their friends. Musa called it "a political Mahathir thing": the prime minister's "ability to create this worry, because if you are so powerful nobody dares challenge you. And he managed to create that impression. And nobody dared, indeed."[85]

Still, Dr. Mahathir took no chances. After his narrow squeak in 1987, New UMNO's constitution was changed to make it almost impossible for anyone to challenge him and his deputy by arranging so-called bonus votes for the number of nominations that candidates received. Every nomination received from party divisions for the posts of president and deputy president carried with