Mahathir keeps fighting, but for how long?

By Patrick McDowell

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP): When 15 skydivers set a record on New Year's Eve by parachuting off the world's tallest buildings, the Petronas Twin Towers, they received medals from the man the nickel-plated spires have come to symbolize -- Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

One parachutist, impressed with Mahathir's achievement in turning Malaysia from a rubber-dependent backwater into one of Asia's most modern nations, commented that the world would be a better place if there were 40 more Mahathirs to run it.

Maybe not, Mahathir replied: "We'd probably spend all our time fighting each other."

Since taking office in 1981, Malaysia's leader has developed a reputation for world-class pugnacity. He hasn't been shy about taking on all who got in his way, from uppity sultans to the International Monetary Fund to his now-jailed former protege, Anwar Ibrahim.

But some Malaysians, even within his own party, are wondering how much longer Mahathir, still a vigorous 75 but increasingly showing his age, can hang on to power and whether the stability he has brought in a volatile region will be risked if he insists on staying.

In recent months, the embattled opposition has increasingly landed telling blows, winning a key by-election and staging surprisingly well-attended rallies in Mahathir's home state, Kedah, in the northern rice bowl.

Many Malay Muslims, the dominant ethnic group and bedrock of Mahathir's United Malays National Organization, are deserting to an Islamic fundamentalist movement and to a party headed by Anwar's wife.

Efforts to bring the upstart groups into talks to restore Malay unity -- where Mahathir's party has always called the shots in a race-based system -- have failed. It could be an indication that politics have evolved beyond the ethnic passions that led to bloody riots in 1969 pitting Malays against the Chinese minority.

While Mahathir contends the 1997 Asian economic crisis that triggered the decline in his popularity is finished, with Malaysia posting 7 percent growth last year, the dizzying boom that characterized Southeast Asia in the mid-1990s has never really returned.

Buildings stand half finished. The national airline and a light-rail project recently had to be bailed out financially. An initial stock offering by a telecommunications company sold only a quarter of the shares available.

And many fear vital electronics exports will slide if the U.S. economy should fall into a slump.

The government has dusted off time-proven responses: It's trying to unite Malays by playing on old fears of Chinese economic dominance. It criticizes globalization while sending trade missions abroad to woo more investment. It has even accused foreign media of an anti-Malaysian plot, triggered by photos in a magazine that Mahathir thought made him look "like an idiot."

But none of that has struck home with the public, and sentiment is growing that the prime minister is losing his touch.

"The politics in this country is not the same as before," says P. Ramasamy, a political science lecturer at National University of Malaysia. "All these things that were taken for granted are being sort of questioned, ridiculed."

Shahrir Samad, a critical member of the governing party's supreme council, put it much more bluntly after the party lost a hard-fought state by-election in Mahathir's home state in November.

"This is the 'old man syndrome' of an old man sulking," Shahrir said at the time. "The voters did not see any changes in the government, which is perceived as full of corruption, self- serving and out of touch with the people."

Unless that changes by 2004, when parliamentary elections must be held and hundreds of thousands of young voters will cast ballots for the first time, the ruling party may be faced with losing power for the first time since independence from Britain in 1957.

The worst ethnic violence in decades erupted in poor townships on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in early March as Malay Muslims clashed with ethnic Indians, resulting in six deaths.

Though the cause was attributed to a local dispute and showed no sign of spreading, the violence highlighted below-the-surface racial tensions between majority Malays and minority Chinese and Indians that define the country's politics.

In his long career, Mahathir has alternately played up frictions and portrayed his government as the only force that can keep them in check to build a peaceful and harmonious society.

Mahathir has promised to step down by 2004, but some feel his party needs to remake itself soon or keep losing popularity, leading the economy to stagnate and fueling the rise of Islamic fundamentalists.

The Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party is the largest component of a four-party opposition front, but has little in common with its partners other than a desire to defeat Mahathir. The party advocates an Islamic state, with separation of the sexes and bans on alcohol, but contends it would respect the rights of non- Muslims.

Speculation has arisen that Mahathir could be nudged out by his own party as early as April, after leaders of the party's factions are selected. The division leaders have launched party purges in the past.

But time and again over the years, the prime minister has proven wrong those who tried to write his political obituary

Most believe Mahathir will choose his own time and it won't be soon. Not even the opposition thinks mass protests will ignite to drive the government from office, as has happened in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Chandra Muzzaffar, deputy president of the opposition National Justice Party, notes Malaysia has neither the mass deprivation nor cracks in the elite that characterized the Indonesian and Philippine upheavals.

"We've had a political crisis for the past 2 1/2 years, but not a single rat has jumped off the sinking ship," Chandra says. "The rats know the ship is sinking, but they won't leave."