Singaporeans' View of Mahathir
The Mahathir Dilemma
Commentary by Susan Long in Straits Times 23rd Feb 2003
DEPENDING on whom you ask, the responses are disconcertingly dissimilar.
Many Malaysians see Dr Mahathir Mohamad as a firebrand visionary. To them, his provocative lucidity when chewing up the bullying West or the upstart southern neighbour is a source of enormous pride.
To many Singaporeans however, the Malaysian Prime Minister is a loose cannon; and his sporadic 'anti-this, anti-that' outbursts a cringing embarrassment.
Indignation is penting up this side of the Causeway, as Singaporeans become drawn into the water-logged bilateral saga.
The newly-elected Dr Mahathir, on a visit to Singapore, with then-PM Lee back in 1981. Better-educated and informed Singaporeans, though, have a curious mix of disdain and grudging respect for the man, notes Dr Andrew Tan, a security analyst with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS).
The disdain is for his anti-Singapore bashing, while respect is for the way he has 'stood up to fundamentalist Muslims' in his country and the manner he shepherded Malaysia through the recent economic storm without International Monetary Fund assistance.
Singaporeans despise what they see as the lack of a level playing field in Malaysia for all races. They also resent the abang-adik relationship Dr Mahathir and other Umno politicians seem to foist on Singapore, in which the Singaporean little brother has to give way to the elder Malaysian one.
But they give the man full marks for weathering internal political challenges, earning the respect of non-Malays in spite of his pro-bumiputra policies and steering Malaysia down the modernisation superhighway.
As such, pragmatic Singaporeans see him as someone Singapore can do business with and so far the 'best bulwark' against Malaysia's ultra-nationalistic Malay camp.
The harshest portrait his detractors here paint of him is that of South-east Asia's longest-serving leader desperately hanging on to power - a wily 78-year-old who has had a heart bypass, introduced controversial currency controls and has not had a single deputy prime minister who lasted longer than five years.
Detractors notwithstanding, Dr Mahathir has a loyal coterie of doctor friends here who studied medicine with him at the then University of Malaya in the late 1940s and will defend him to their dying day.His Singapore schoolmates, which include general practitioner Koh Eng Kheng, general surgeon J.J. Murugasu and eye surgeon Arthur Lim, stood by him when he fell from Umno's grace in 1969 and became a political exile.
His class of '47, who meet regularly, describe him with genuine fondness as 'a good friend who will go out of his way to help you' and who remains 'unspoilt by fame and name'.
TRUTH AND DARE
WHY such a discrepancy of views between his friends and his detractors, in particular why such heightened negativity towards Dr Mahathir on the ground?
Political scientists say this is because, apart from Singapore's old guard, Foreign Ministry officials and Malaysia watchers who have grown adept at interpreting Mahathirisms, the rest don't get it. As such, most of Dr Mahathir's actions and rhetoric are misunderstood by the man-in- the-street here.
Institute of Policy Studies research associate Chang Li Lin notes the average Singaporean's 'general lack of awareness' of Malaysia's domestic issues. 'If they realised that there was a constant contest of agendas in Malaysia, there may be greater willingness to take such statements less seriously,' she said.
There is also the failure to see that Malaysian and Singaporean societies, though less than a kilometre apart, are two entirely different propositions - culturally, politically, racially, emotively - and require different strokes.
A prominent Singaporean entrepreneur with business across the Causeway and who has known Dr Mahathir for years, observes: 'Mahathir's job is much harder than we know. He has to deal with many different constituencies with different levels of understanding at home.
'His tactics are not as foolish as we make them out to be. His audience understands his girlfriend's letters and three sen sovereignity analogies better than all the documents that Singapore has circulated. He has achieved his objective,' he says, referring to the government's release of correspondence between Dr Mahathir and Singapore leaders on bilateral issues.
Singaporeans, conditioned to a more rational, consistent and temperate bureaucracy which backs everything up with facts, figures and charts, find it hard to understand that Dr Mahathir's public posturing is largely driven by his political objective of the day.
The bigger reason why Singaporeans have difficulty understanding and accepting Dr Mahathir lies however in his frequent juxtaposition with his contemporary, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who looms large in the Singaporean collective consciousness as epitomising what a world-class statesman should be.
The two men - one philosophical, the other plain-speaking - are often compared and contrasted with each other.
Their intertwined destinies began during the federal parliamentary debates in 1964 and 1965 when Singapore was still part of Malaysia and communal politics was at its most cynical and fractious peak.
According to Malaysian political scientist Khoo Boo Teik in his book, Paradoxes of Mahathirism, Dr Mahathir was part of a band of Umno politicians who launched vitriolic attacks on any real or imagined threat of Chinese encroachment on the 'special position' of Malays.
He soon found that attacks on Chinese communalism 'had emotive appeal to a Malay communalism alarmed by the People Action Party's Malaysian Malaysia campaign,' he wrote. These attacks 'enhanced Mahathir's standing' among Malay political circles, who saw that 'he had dared to lock horns directly with Lee Kuan Yew, whose brilliance as a politician and debater was taken for granted, if grudgingly, by contemporaries and opponents alike'.
Dr Mahathir not only appeared unintimidated, Prof Khoo said, but also contemptuously dismissed the 'mad ambition of one man to see himself as the first Chinese Prime Minister of Malaysia'.
Things came to a head in May 1965 when Dr Mahathir, then MP for Kota Star Selatan in Kedah, denounced the PAP in Parliament as 'pro-Chinese, communist oriented, and positively anti-Malay'.
Eventually, frequent condemnation of the PAP and its Malaysian Malaysia push - perceived as a threat to the Malays who felt that equal treatment of all races would result in unequal development and Malays losing their stake in the country - led to the fateful separation of Singapore from Malaysia in August 1965.
After that, Dr Mahathir said: 'I welcomed the decision as I felt Singapore was too big a mouthful for Malaysia. Singaporean Chinese were too aggressive and lacking the understanding and sensitiveness of most Malaysian Chinese.'
SHADOW ALLIES
TO THEIR credit, both leaders have downplayed any personal enmity or historical baggage, always insisting that bilateral woes are rooted in intrinsic ideological differences and exacerbated by proximity.
The closest concession Dr Mahathir ever makes is in his book, The Malay Dilemma, where he wrote: 'The conflict of interests became a conflict of personalities which affected the thinking of leaders on both sides of the Causeway.'
But despite their early verbal clashes - necessitated by having diametrically different interests to protect on opposing sides - political watchers say both statesmen probably have more traits in common than they would care to admit.
Mr Kwa Chong Guan, an IDSS specialist in Asian military history, says: 'The problem may be that they both understand the other too well. Both Dr Mahathir and Mr Lee were English-educated. Both are extremely pragmatic. Both grew up in the post-World War II era of decolonisation, struggle for independence and nation-building. Both are in the rare category of visionary leaders who drag their societies into their visions of new worlds rather than be carried by their peoples.'
Both are results-driven politicians who subscribe to social Darwinism, believe that the ends justify means and judge power by its ability to affect change.
As Dr Mathathir told Asia Inc magazine last year: 'I don't care what people think of me. I only think about what I have been able to do, about what I have done. That's the usefulness of having authority: to be able to do things.'
Indeed, over the years, they evolved from political opponents into shadow allies, burying personal prejudices to achieve their nationalistic visions.
Mr Kwa notes that during Dr Mahathir's first years in office from 1981, he and Mr Lee 'were able to manage, if not resolve' old issues and initiate new projects such as building the Linggiu Dam.
Both also competed for the mantle of spokesman for new Asia, mowing down Western double standards of democracy and winning a firm following among developing countries.
In a speech given by Professor Arthur Lim at the Asean Business Forum in 2001, he paid tribute to both Dr Mahathir and SM Lee, among other world leaders: 'They were all revolutionaries, driven by impossible dreams, possessed by unreasonable vision, commited to what so obviously could not be done by ordinary people like us. And they all commanded the ground long enough to plant the seeds, to nourish the plant, to see impossible dreams well on their way to reality.'
In time, one hopes Singaporeans and Malaysians will appreciate both the striking similarities between their leaders and the subtle differences of their political contexts, separated only by a sliver of sea, and truly understand the poignancy of being so close yet so far apart.
Mahathir and Malaysia
'The objective historian might well say that he was not only the great Malay leader of the 20th century but also the greatest Malay of the last 500 years... under his watch, Malaysians have finally broken the bonds of colonial servitude and discovered the fundamental truth of 'Malaysia Boleh'.' - Eye surgeon Dr Arthur Lim, who attended medical school with Dr Mahathir at the University of Malaya in Singapore in the 1940s
'In fact, Singapore and Dr M are like a divorced couple who maintain a fractious relationship long after separation simply because they live next to each other. There are periods of sentimental co-existence separated by emotive battles. Still, for good or for worse, both ultimately realise that their fates are intertwined. ' - Dr Andrew Tan, a security analyst with the Institute Of Defence and Strategic Studies
'To speak of Singapore-Malaysia problems as 'historical baggage' is to miss the point.
'If it had been only historical baggage, then after more than 30 years as two independent states, our relations should have stabilised.'But the root cause of the recurring problems in Singapore-Malaysia relations is our diametrically different approaches to the problems facing our two multi-racial societies.'
- Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew in his memoirs, From Third World To First
'No other Malaysian Prime Minister or Minister had ever publicly said they had anything to learn from Singapore; Mahathir did not suffer from this inhibition.'This open-minded attitude of learning from anyone whose success he wanted to duplicate in Malaysia distinguished him from his predecessors.' SM Lee in From Third World To First
Singaporeans' View of Mahathir
The Mahathir Dilemma
Commentary by Susan Long in Straits Times 23rd Feb 2003
DEPENDING on whom you ask, the responses are disconcertingly dissimilar.
Many Malaysians see Dr Mahathir Mohamad as a firebrand visionary. To them, his provocative lucidity when chewing up the bullying West or the upstart southern neighbour is a source of enormous pride.
To many Singaporeans however, the Malaysian Prime Minister is a loose cannon; and his sporadic 'anti-this, anti-that' outbursts a cringing embarrassment.
Indignation is penting up this side of the Causeway, as Singaporeans become drawn into the water-logged bilateral saga.
The newly-elected Dr Mahathir, on a visit to Singapore, with then-PM Lee back in 1981. Better-educated and informed Singaporeans, though, have a curious mix of disdain and grudging respect for the man, notes Dr Andrew Tan, a security analyst with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS).
The disdain is for his anti-Singapore bashing, while respect is for the way he has 'stood up to fundamentalist Muslims' in his country and the manner he shepherded Malaysia through the recent economic storm without International Monetary Fund assistance.
Singaporeans despise what they see as the lack of a level playing field in Malaysia for all races. They also resent the abang-adik relationship Dr Mahathir and other Umno politicians seem to foist on Singapore, in which the Singaporean little brother has to give way to the elder Malaysian one.
But they give the man full marks for weathering internal political challenges, earning the respect of non-Malays in spite of his pro-bumiputra policies and steering Malaysia down the modernisation superhighway.
As such, pragmatic Singaporeans see him as someone Singapore can do business with and so far the 'best bulwark' against Malaysia's ultra-nationalistic Malay camp.
The harshest portrait his detractors here paint of him is that of South-east Asia's longest-serving leader desperately hanging on to power - a wily 78-year-old who has had a heart bypass, introduced controversial currency controls and has not had a single deputy prime minister who lasted longer than five years.
Detractors notwithstanding, Dr Mahathir has a loyal coterie of doctor friends here who studied medicine with him at the then University of Malaya in the late 1940s and will defend him to their dying day.His Singapore schoolmates, which include general practitioner Koh Eng Kheng, general surgeon J.J. Murugasu and eye surgeon Arthur Lim, stood by him when he fell from Umno's grace in 1969 and became a political exile.
His class of '47, who meet regularly, describe him with genuine fondness as 'a good friend who will go out of his way to help you' and who remains 'unspoilt by fame and name'.
TRUTH AND DARE
WHY such a discrepancy of views between his friends and his detractors, in particular why such heightened negativity towards Dr Mahathir on the ground?
Political scientists say this is because, apart from Singapore's old guard, Foreign Ministry officials and Malaysia watchers who have grown adept at interpreting Mahathirisms, the rest don't get it. As such, most of Dr Mahathir's actions and rhetoric are misunderstood by the man-in- the-street here.
Institute of Policy Studies research associate Chang Li Lin notes the average Singaporean's 'general lack of awareness' of Malaysia's domestic issues. 'If they realised that there was a constant contest of agendas in Malaysia, there may be greater willingness to take such statements less seriously,' she said.
There is also the failure to see that Malaysian and Singaporean societies, though less than a kilometre apart, are two entirely different propositions - culturally, politically, racially, emotively - and require different strokes.
A prominent Singaporean entrepreneur with business across the Causeway and who has known Dr Mahathir for years, observes: 'Mahathir's job is much harder than we know. He has to deal with many different constituencies with different levels of understanding at home.
'His tactics are not as foolish as we make them out to be. His audience understands his girlfriend's letters and three sen sovereignity analogies better than all the documents that Singapore has circulated. He has achieved his objective,' he says, referring to the government's release of correspondence between Dr Mahathir and Singapore leaders on bilateral issues.
Singaporeans, conditioned to a more rational, consistent and temperate bureaucracy which backs everything up with facts, figures and charts, find it hard to understand that Dr Mahathir's public posturing is largely driven by his political objective of the day.
The bigger reason why Singaporeans have difficulty understanding and accepting Dr Mahathir lies however in his frequent juxtaposition with his contemporary, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who looms large in the Singaporean collective consciousness as epitomising what a world-class statesman should be.
The two men - one philosophical, the other plain-speaking - are often compared and contrasted with each other.
Their intertwined destinies began during the federal parliamentary debates in 1964 and 1965 when Singapore was still part of Malaysia and communal politics was at its most cynical and fractious peak.
According to Malaysian political scientist Khoo Boo Teik in his book, Paradoxes of Mahathirism, Dr Mahathir was part of a band of Umno politicians who launched vitriolic attacks on any real or imagined threat of Chinese encroachment on the 'special position' of Malays.
He soon found that attacks on Chinese communalism 'had emotive appeal to a Malay communalism alarmed by the People Action Party's Malaysian Malaysia campaign,' he wrote. These attacks 'enhanced Mahathir's standing' among Malay political circles, who saw that 'he had dared to lock horns directly with Lee Kuan Yew, whose brilliance as a politician and debater was taken for granted, if grudgingly, by contemporaries and opponents alike'.
Dr Mahathir not only appeared unintimidated, Prof Khoo said, but also contemptuously dismissed the 'mad ambition of one man to see himself as the first Chinese Prime Minister of Malaysia'.
Things came to a head in May 1965 when Dr Mahathir, then MP for Kota Star Selatan in Kedah, denounced the PAP in Parliament as 'pro-Chinese, communist oriented, and positively anti-Malay'.
Eventually, frequent condemnation of the PAP and its Malaysian Malaysia push - perceived as a threat to the Malays who felt that equal treatment of all races would result in unequal development and Malays losing their stake in the country - led to the fateful separation of Singapore from Malaysia in August 1965.
After that, Dr Mahathir said: 'I welcomed the decision as I felt Singapore was too big a mouthful for Malaysia. Singaporean Chinese were too aggressive and lacking the understanding and sensitiveness of most Malaysian Chinese.'
SHADOW ALLIES
TO THEIR credit, both leaders have downplayed any personal enmity or historical baggage, always insisting that bilateral woes are rooted in intrinsic ideological differences and exacerbated by proximity.
The closest concession Dr Mahathir ever makes is in his book, The Malay Dilemma, where he wrote: 'The conflict of interests became a conflict of personalities which affected the thinking of leaders on both sides of the Causeway.'
But despite their early verbal clashes - necessitated by having diametrically different interests to protect on opposing sides - political watchers say both statesmen probably have more traits in common than they would care to admit.
Mr Kwa Chong Guan, an IDSS specialist in Asian military history, says: 'The problem may be that they both understand the other too well. Both Dr Mahathir and Mr Lee were English-educated. Both are extremely pragmatic. Both grew up in the post-World War II era of decolonisation, struggle for independence and nation-building. Both are in the rare category of visionary leaders who drag their societies into their visions of new worlds rather than be carried by their peoples.'
Both are results-driven politicians who subscribe to social Darwinism, believe that the ends justify means and judge power by its ability to affect change.
As Dr Mathathir told Asia Inc magazine last year: 'I don't care what people think of me. I only think about what I have been able to do, about what I have done. That's the usefulness of having authority: to be able to do things.'
Indeed, over the years, they evolved from political opponents into shadow allies, burying personal prejudices to achieve their nationalistic visions.
Mr Kwa notes that during Dr Mahathir's first years in office from 1981, he and Mr Lee 'were able to manage, if not resolve' old issues and initiate new projects such as building the Linggiu Dam.
Both also competed for the mantle of spokesman for new Asia, mowing down Western double standards of democracy and winning a firm following among developing countries.
In a speech given by Professor Arthur Lim at the Asean Business Forum in 2001, he paid tribute to both Dr Mahathir and SM Lee, among other world leaders: 'They were all revolutionaries, driven by impossible dreams, possessed by unreasonable vision, commited to what so obviously could not be done by ordinary people like us. And they all commanded the ground long enough to plant the seeds, to nourish the plant, to see impossible dreams well on their way to reality.'
In time, one hopes Singaporeans and Malaysians will appreciate both the striking similarities between their leaders and the subtle differences of their political contexts, separated only by a sliver of sea, and truly understand the poignancy of being so close yet so far apart.
Mahathir and Malaysia
'The objective historian might well say that he was not only the great Malay leader of the 20th century but also the greatest Malay of the last 500 years... under his watch, Malaysians have finally broken the bonds of colonial servitude and discovered the fundamental truth of 'Malaysia Boleh'.' - Eye surgeon Dr Arthur Lim, who attended medical school with Dr Mahathir at the University of Malaya in Singapore in the 1940s
'In fact, Singapore and Dr M are like a divorced couple who maintain a fractious relationship long after separation simply because they live next to each other. There are periods of sentimental co-existence separated by emotive battles. Still, for good or for worse, both ultimately realise that their fates are intertwined. ' - Dr Andrew Tan, a security analyst with the Institute Of Defence and Strategic Studies
'To speak of Singapore-Malaysia problems as 'historical baggage' is to miss the point.
'If it had been only historical baggage, then after more than 30 years as two independent states, our relations should have stabilised.'But the root cause of the recurring problems in Singapore-Malaysia relations is our diametrically different approaches to the problems facing our two multi-racial societies.'
- Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew in his memoirs, From Third World To First
'No other Malaysian Prime Minister or Minister had ever publicly said they had anything to learn from Singapore; Mahathir did not suffer from this inhibition.'This open-minded attitude of learning from anyone whose success he wanted to duplicate in Malaysia distinguished him from his predecessors.' SM Lee in From Third World To First
