Mahathir under fire at APEC

Mahathir under fire at APEC

In an earlier article, The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent
Harvey Stockwin argued that the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
forum (APEC) leaders should quietly rebuke Malaysian Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad's authoritarianism by staying away from
the Kuala Lumpur APEC summit. In the event, several APEC leaders
preferred to deliver their criticisms of Malaysia in person,
thereby making it more a political than an economic summit.

HONG KONG (JP): The annual summit of APEC got underway in
Kuala Lumpur on Nov. 17 amid Malaysian screams of protests at the
criticism by foreign leaders of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's
authoritarianism.

As economic cooperation took a back seat to political discord,
Mahathir had no one to blame but himself. All along he had sought
to use the summit (as he used the recent Commonwealth Games, and
as he now hopes to use the Olympic Games if Kuala Lumpur is
chosen to host them in 2008) to bolster his increasingly
repressive regime.

However Mahathir went a step too far when he suddenly
dismissed and arrested his longtime deputy Anwar Ibrahim,
pronouncing him guilty of sexual deviancy in advance of any
trial. The Prime Minister thereby aroused long dormant opposition
within Malaysia, as well as many foreign critics.

Mahathir expected his 20 APEC partners to implicitly endorse
his dictatorial rule, at a summit which was expected to boost the
Malaysian image.

Instead, several member nations have chosen either to publicly
sympathize with Anwar Ibrahim or to endorse the Malaysian need
for political reform. Predictably Mahathir's loyal followers have
protested this "interference" in Malaysia's internal affairs,
sometimes in such strident terms that the critics have felt
further justified in being censorious.

This unexpected APEC interaction got underway as Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright breezed into Kuala Lumpur for 24 hours
and spent a sympathetic hour at her hotel with Anwar's wife Wan
Azizah. Later she chose only to meet Malaysian Trade Minister
Rafidah Aziz, who responded by asserting that anyone was free to
meet whoever they wanted, and that when she was next in
Washington DC she would hurry to meet special prosecutor Kenneth
Starr as a tit-for-tat.

Albright managed to point out that Starr was not in prison
before the long arm of Malaysian authoritarianism reached out to
turn off her microphone. However a high U.S. official was heard
murmuring that Rafidah's irrelevant reference to Starr spoke
volumes for what was wrong with Malaysia.

Meanwhile the Canadian Foreign and Trade Ministers both also
met Wan Azizah, and expressed a wider concern over Malaysia's
human rights record. Rafidah Aziz reportedly canceled a meeting
with them in retaliation. In a somewhat lower key, the Australian
Prime Minister John Howard and New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny
Shipley only mentioned concern over the Anwar case when they
separately met with Mahathir.

Earlier Howard had seemed to advance a new but dubious
doctrine of Australian appeasement as he argued that, since
Australia is a part of Asia, it is not in a position to adopt the
firmer postures of other nations.

This was a reference to U.S. President Bill Clinton's decision
-- itself scarcely a firm posture -- not to have a one-on-one
meeting with Mahathir. Clearly American waffling takes on a more
rugged image down under in Australia.

Subsequently, Clinton canceled his visit to Kuala Lumpur, and
Albright shortened hers, not in protest, but because of the Iraqi
crisis. Vice President Al Gore was sent in Clinton's place and
the Malaysians sighed with relief -- but not for long.

In fact, Gore trumped all other protests, and ended U.S.
waffling, in a public speech Monday evening as he placed the
stress, not merely on Anwar Ibrahim, but on the need for
political reform within Malaysia -- and other authoritarian
countries. He also praised the few courageous Malaysians who have
so far had the courage to call and demonstrate for such reform in
the wake of Anwar's sacking.

"Among nations suffering economic crises," Gore said, in a
quote that went round the world, "we continue to hear calls for
democracy, calls for reform in many languages --people's power,
doi moi, reformasi. We hear them -- right here, right now --
among the brave people of Malaysia".

This was clearly too much for Trade Minister Rafidah who
obviously aims to be Mahathir's leading sycophant. She termed
Gore's comments "the most disgusting speech I have ever heard in
my life." Even more abusive quotes were quickly produced by
Malaysia's controlled press.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Abdullah Badawi accused Gore of
"sanctimonious sermonizing" and of going beyond interference to
"incitement". Either because he was so angry, or because he was
reading a statement Mahathir had ordered, Badawi made the
surprising mistake of referring to Malaysia as a "multilateral
country" instead of a multiracial one.

The best comment was a photo of Mahathir listening to Gore, in
which he wore the identical expression of suppressed fury which
used to cross Ferdinand Marcos' face whenever visiting U.S.
Senators and Congressmen resisted Imelda's lavish hospitality and
still lectured the Philippine dictator on his human rights
failings.

Two hours after the Gore lecture, and one hour after the
Clinton White House had issued a statement strongly supporting
the Vice President's comments, Mahathir had more to be furious
about.

Philippine President Joseph Estrada became the first APEC head
of government to make a point of meeting Anwar's wife, Wan
Azizah, in his hotel.

While the summit did not exude the political approval which
Mahathir yearned to acquire, he may still be able to turn the
foreign criticism to his short term advantage.

For a start, the severely controlled Malaysian media is most
unlikely to let Malaysians know all that happened, or all that
Gore said. Come to that, the uncontrolled foreign media has also
been at fault in this way, fastening on to one Gore quote (the
one above) out of a 4,500 word speech which was a reasoned
critique of the current Asian crisis and what need to be done to
meet it.

Both within and without Malaysia the Gore speech is being made
out to be merely a blazing critique of Malaysia when it was no
such thing. Gore directed more critical comments at Japan than at
Malaysia. The references to Malaysia were in the context of
political change being a necessary adjunct of economic and
financial reform -- and were only remarkable because even such
indirect criticisms of Mahathir are entirely missing from the
mainstream Malaysian media.

The Gore speech in fact represented belated partial U.S.
recognition that politics and economics are inseparably linked in
the current Asian crisis.

"The future of free and robust global markets" Gore said,
"depends so strongly on a third challenge -- one that surpasses
all the others, even as it supports all the others. It is
democracy, and the growth of self-government around the world.

"History has taught us that freedom -- economic, political and
religious freedom -- unlocks a higher fraction of the human
potential than any other way of organizing society.

"And that means it is the best guarantee of prosperity in the
future. As (South Korean) President Kim Dae-jung has said, "Only
a democratic society will be able to take full advantage of the
benefits of the information age." If governments try to suppress
the creative potential of their people by denying them access to
information, they will undercut their own efforts to build their
economies. Any government that suppresses information, suppresses
the economic potential of the Information Age.

"Some take another view. They cling to the belief that
authoritarian rule makes it easier to impose the fiscal
discipline and financial sacrifice often necessary to weather
economic storms and spark growth. The facts refute that view.

"People will accept sacrifice in a democracy, not only because
they have a role in choosing it, but because they rightly believe
they are likely to benefit from it.

"The message this year from Indonesia is unmistakable: people
are willing to take responsibility for their future -- if they
have the power to determine that future. From Thailand to South
Korea, Eastern Europe to Mexico, democracies have done better in
coping with economic crises than nations where freedom is
suppressed. Democracy confers a stamp of legitimacy that reforms
must have in order to be effective".

This may be correct analysis -- but was Gore right to say it?

Almost certainly the Americans forgot two salient facts.
Mahathir would interpret the argument as a personal attack.
Mahathir can easily use his authoritarian control of what
Malaysians are allowed to think to turn this "interference" into
an anti-foreign campaign, branding the exponents of "reformasi"
as lackeys of outside powers, and stooges of the Americans.

There are already hints of this latter outcome, as Badawi
blamed the U.S. in advance for any disturbance to the stability
of Malaysia's "multilateral" society. A steady compulsory diet of
Mahathir's anti-Western and anti-foreign harangues has inevitably
given Malaysian nationalism, over the last 17 years, a brittle
edge which was previously lacking.

So while Gore has effectively detached the U.S. from the
Malaysian dictatorship much earlier than the U.S. had detached
itself from Pinochet, Marcos or Soeharto, he may have
inadvertently handicapped those opponents of Mahathir whom he was
intending to encourage.