Mahathir: Not in Soeharto's shoes

Mahathir: Not in Soeharto's shoes

By Brian Williams

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): "Reformasi" rang out on the streets of Indonesia four months ago and a long-ruling president cracked down and then came tumbling down.

The same word rang out on the streets of Malaysia this week and another veteran ruler cracked down. The world is waiting to see if Mahathir Mohamad also comes tumbling down.

The judgment so far appears to be that the Malaysian prime minister has not yet reached the "terminal" stage that brought down former Indonesian president Soeharto.

On the surface, parallels between the fall of Soeharto and the challenge to Mahathir make for easy comparisons.

Aging leaders long in control of their country, out of touch with demands for "Reformasi", or reform, among the young, and rapidly growing economies that have run out of steam.

Mahathir even invited the comparison on Tuesday when he told his first news conference on recent protests that their leader, sacked finance minister Anwar Ibrahim, was trying to set off an Indonesian-style uprising.

But listen to ex-Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the doyen of Southeast Asia's trio of leaders who presided over the region's fabulous economic growth.

"Malaysia, despite the bad press it is getting, has an economy that is sound in its basics and there is no danger of civil disorder," Lee said in a speech on Sunday, the day protests against Mahathir reached their height in Kuala Lumpur.

A key statistic backs up Lee's assessment that no matter how bad Malaysia's economic plight and dissatisfaction with Mahathir, its 22 million people are in far better shape than Indonesia's 200 million people were when a popular uprising ousted Soeharto.

The Asian Development Bank's latest assessment of the two nations' per-capita gross national product showed the Malaysian figure was $4,370, more than four times Indonesia's $1,080. Terumasa Nakanishi, professor of international politics at Japan's Kyoto University, believes Mahathir has a 50-50 chance of staying in power.

"The steps Mahathir takes in the next few months will decide if he keeps his job," Nakanishi told Reuters.

"With the Malaysian economy likely to turn for the worse, Mahathir is expected to face a life-or-death situation towards the end of this year and earlier next year -- the time of Ramadhan," he said, referring to the Moslem fasting month.

"Companies may not be able to pay usual Ramadhan bonuses to their employees which could spark civil unrest," he said.

Australian academic Harold Crouch says the Malaysian protests have not approached the critical mass of riots that rocked Indonesia.

He said the Malaysian situation so far had lacked the ethnic tension present in Indonesia where Chinese businesses were targeted for attack.

"It's hardly rioting. The element of ethnic tension is just not present," said Crouch, a senior member of the Australian National University's School of Pacific and Asian Studies in Canberra.

Crouch also said many more people shared in the spoils of government in Malaysia than in Indonesia where much wealth flowed to Soeharto's family.

"Soeharto's patronage was a kind of inverted pyramid if you like," said Crouch.

Takeshi Nobehara, chief Asia expert at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo, said Mahathir's future would, like Soeharto's, be decided by his handling of the ailing economy.

"Malaysia is becoming the eye of a typhoon in Asia," Nobehara said.

"Mahathir is involved in a very dangerous gamble. If his economic policies, including tightened control on foreign exchange, fail, he will have to step down."