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.