Mahathir Mohamad

What goes around comes around: The narrative of the lives of politicians are often the same, sharing structural features that read like a predictable storybook. More often than not they come to power promising a wave of reforms, but soon enough discover--as if by shock--that democracy is more complicated when one has to work within its parameters and that a healthy opposition can also be a stumbling block to one’s ambitions.
The sad fate of so many politicians in Asia is that they begin with many promises and end up by reneging on all of them. Even more ironic is the final chapter of their lives when the sins and mistakes of the past come to haunt them.
In Malaysia we have the sorry tale of Mahathir Mohamad, who was seen by millions as the saviour of the nation when he came to power in 1981. It is undeniable that he was then the most popular leader in Malaysia, the blue-eyed boy of the rising Malay middle classes who wanted to break into the corridors of power and snatch control away from the clammy clutches of an aristocratic elite. In this respect at least Mahathir had succeeded; his rise to power marked the rise of the self-made Malays who apparently had broken away from their feudal past.
The Mahathir years are now being questioned by many. During the first few years he was seen as the great reformer, innovator and democrat. Mahathir’s experiment with democracy led to the opening up of the press and the emergence of a civil society culture that was fairly autonomous of the state.
But Mahathir, like many of his peers in the region, soon came to feel that democracy was a hindrance rather than an asset, and the predictable U-turns soon followed. Following the political crisis of 1987, which nearly led to race riots in the country, Malaysia’s brief flirtation with democracy came to an end. The police crackdown of 1987 led to the arrest of more than 100 politicians, intellectuals, activists and members of the lay public, as well as the closure of newspapers. One individual whose hold over the executive wing of the government was nearly absolute controlled Malaysia.
Malaysia’s economic bubble burst during the economic crisis of 1997-98, when people realised that the country’s economic miracle was nothing more than a febrile tissue of lies. The Malaysian economy, like that of Thailand and Indonesia, was built on foreign investment and indiscriminate credit expansion fuelled more by idle speculation than concrete development. The myth had died, but it was Mahathir who took the blame. After all, having taken so much credit for everything that went right in the 1980s and 1990s, it was only fair that he be blamed for the failures as well.
Following his resignation in 2003, Mahathir bowed out of the picture and many analysts were truly amazed by his objective distance from politics. He was no Lee Kuan Yew, whose presence was keenly felt in the corridors of power in Singapore. Mahathir vowed not to return to politics; he was going to spend his years on the international conference circuit and writing his memoirs.
But of late the man seems to have made a comeback when he felt that what he had struggled for was being betrayed by the new administration of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The straw that broke the former prime minister’s back was the decision of the Malaysian government to scrap the plan for a bridge to Singapore, ostensibly on the grounds that the project was economically unproductive. Mahathir’s reaction was blunt and to the point: Singapore has no right to influence Malaysia’s development policy.
It appears that Mahathir is back in the fray. But this time he has no voice of his own. Two decades of Mahathir’s rule mean that the media are now under direct or indirect governmental control, and as a former prime minister, he does not have the same access as before. Mahathir is now forced to make his case on the Internet, of all places, having his unedited letters put on websites once associated with the opposition he himself so vehemently opposed.
His interview this week with the on-line Malaysian daily Malaysiakini.com marks the final U-turn that has brought the man back to where he was. Claiming that there is no press freedom in Malaysia and that he has been denied his right to speak.
Dr Farish A Noor,
a Malaysian political
scientist and human rights activist
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

There was a time, not that long ago, when African leaders insisted that it was politically incorrect to discuss tribalism. Tribalism was the face of old Africa that the modernizers, inheriting their domains from the departing colonialists, refused to accept.
One hundred years of colonialism (less in many countries) and the subsequent creation of four dozen new states, each insisting on the sanctity of colonial boundaries as a sensible way of avoiding future conflicts, could not blot out 800 tribal boundaries.
On Africa’s left it has been a common jibe that the Europeans “divided“ Africa. In fact they brought Africa together. Indeed--as in Nigeria, where Lord Lugard forced more than 250 ethnic groups involving today’s 130 million people into one political unit--you could argue that the colonialists went overboard in the quest for unity.
In Uganda, the young Winston Churchill’s “pearl of Africa,“ the British fashioned a country out of the mixture of Nilotic and Bantu peoples, despite the fact they’d been antagonists for centuries. Once the British left it was not long before the country fell apart. Idi Amin’s murderous regime was the product of tribal enmity, not the cause. In Sudan, the British tried to push together not just diverse African tribes but Arab peoples too. War erupted 50 years ago, long before oil or China came on the scene.
Sudan is African tribalism in its extreme form. But everywhere on the continent tribalism lives and breathes in everyday life. It is the glue that holds ordinary society together. It is also the gunpowder that can tear it part when politics, economics or the pressures of a degraded, overcrowded, environment combine to ignite the charge.
In day-to-day village life tribalism operates like the old school tie: helping each other with jobs, introductions and sweethearts, sharing the burden of harvest or building a new house, resolving disputes (whether marital or material) and, not least, fashioning art and music. It is only when conflict erupts that these virtues mutate into a virulent, spare-no-quarter contagion and the wrong tribal scar becomes a death warrant.
This is not to argue that Africa should be broken up again into 800 parts. African leaders, given the choice, have opted to keep old colonial boundaries intact, deciding that the virtues outweighed the negatives.
If the northern Muslim states were not part of Nigeria, life under the emirs would be even less receptive to the necessity for education and health services than it already is. Traditional leaders, even if “closer“ to the people, are not necessarily models of virtue.
Still, some redrawing of the map of Africa could be a good thing, if quietly negotiated. President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria took his dispute with neighboring Cameroon over ownership of the Bakassi Peninsula to the World Court and has accepted a ruling that will give this oil-rich land to Cameroon in July.
Nigeria, in fact, despite its many simmering tribal disputes, shows that most of them can be contained and the enmity softened, as long as the political leadership works on the problems.
People today forget how terrible the war in Biafra was, yet despite losing one quarter of their population, Igbos are today well integrated into Nigeria and many of the scars have healed. Moreover, despite Nigeria’s diversity, the number of deaths in recent tribal disputes remains modest. Africans are better at forgiveness than most other people.
IHT.COM

Montenegrians celebrate on the streets of Podgorica, May 21. (AFP File Photo)

Montenegro votes for independence, the headlines declared at the result of the referendum in the Balkan republic. But is independence really what lies in store? My dictionary has independence as: “Completely self-governing not subject to or showing the influence of others.“ By this definition, independence is not what they will be getting.
The most important political and economic decisions, which will affect the everyday lives of citizens in the republic, will not be made in its capital, Podgorica, but in Brussels, Geneva and Washington and the boardrooms of the multinational companies which now dominate the country’s economy.
It is ironic that EU and WTO membership has been most enthusiastically supported by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and the pro-independence factionÑ-for it’s hard to think of an easier way for a small country to lose national independence than by surrendering control of trade and economic policy to unelected bureaucrats miles away.
NATO membership, which Montenegro is also expected to pursue enthusiastically, has similar consequences: The commanders of Montenegro’s new army and navy will have to get used to taking orders from those who planned the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Then there is the role of the IMF and the World Bank. These two unelected bodies have, with the EU, sought to impose Thatcherite neo-liberal solutions on Serbia-Montenegro, ever since the fall of Yugoslavia’s socialist-led government in 2000. Thousands of socially owned enterprises have already been privatized, but the West is still not satisfied.
Montenegro’s tiny economy is even more dominated by foreign capital than Serbia’s, with the privatization process having started much earlier. The selling off of nationally owned assets will have serious implications for the country’s future economic viability and, even with the tourist potential of its attractive coast line, it is difficult to see how Montenegro can afford to pay its way without further surrender to Western financial institutions. In doing so, it will be following the path of its neighbors.
For all the novelties of statehood, the brutal truth is that today’s “independent“ Balkan republics had, if anything, more independence when they were autonomous republics inside the Yugoslav Federation. In place of one militarily strong, internationally respected, non-aligned nation, there now exists a number of weak, economically unviable EU, IMF, NATO protectorates.
The dismantling of Yugoslavia, with its alternative economic and social model, has suited Western capitalism fine. But for the people of the region, the benefits have been harder to discern. Little wonder then that nostalgia for Tito’s Yugoslavia is on the rise. The website “Titoville“ has had more than a million visitors and in Rakovice, a suburb of Sarajevo, an anti-nationalist Serb named Jezdimir Milosevic (no relation) has proclaimed “The Republic of Titoslavia,“ a state “without territory, without international recognition, destined to live in the hearts of its citizens.“ Passports are available for euros 10.
More than 65 years ago, on the eve of the attack on Yugoslavia by the Axis powers, the Serbian jurist Slobodan Jovanovic argued that a single, south Slav state was the best way the people of the Balkans could guarantee their independence and protection. It still is--and that logic seems likely to make itself felt in the years to come. When the victory parades are over, the only real difference the recent narrow vote will make is that Montenegro will be able to enter eurovision.
Neil Clark
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Have you read Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2006 State of the Nation message yet? The one he gave last week? You should.
You may have seen some references to it in the press. A lot was made of his statements that the Cold War is continuing and also that what the Russian Federation needs is love. Good media stuff that. But actually, when you read the whole thing (only 18 pages) it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that this is the testament of a failed state.
Let me tell you why I reach that conclusion. But first let me pull back a bit and ask you to do some of the work. Sit at your computer and type “Russian women“ into Google. OK?
Now, when you see the result what do you make of the information that hundreds of thousands of Russian women are trafficking themselves abroad--in addition to the million or so who have been trafficked abroad against their will. Now type in “Russian orphans.“ OK? You can broaden this one by typing in “Russian babies“ as well. In addition to the loss of babies overseas, Putin is also concerned about the fact that two-thirds of Russian babies are born unhealthy. Russia has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
In his speech, Putin complained that too few Russian children live long enough to become conscripts into the army; he also complained that of those who do live long enough “a huge number“ suffer from chronic diseases and have problems with drinking, smoking and sometimes drugs as well.
To improve the army, he wants these problems addressed by introducing “pre-conscription military training and military sports.“ That will surely get the men off the bottle and needle--a bit late for the more than million who already have AIDS.
Yes, Russia’s population is decreasing by 700,000 a year. Women want out, babies are sold abroad and men are drinking, drugging and smoking themselves to death at an alarming and increasing rate.
Many of the Russians I meet tell me about their plans to move abroad and not go back. They talk with pride about how their children have “escaped“ and about their plans to join them.
Are you beginning to understand why Putin describes the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century? His speech brings to mind images of a cock on a dung hill, crowing while the heap slowly collapses under him.
It is sad that the greatest hope that the “leaders“ of Russia can come up with, also set out in the State of the Nation speech, is for the millions of Russians who were forced by Stalin into the outer empire, Central Asia and the Caucasus, to come back to the fatherland. Or is that motherland?
Most of the exiles who had power or connections or money went back a long time ago. Those who remain are in a very sad situation.
So, Russia is a country where hundreds of thousands of women are desperate to get out at any price, large numbers of other women and orphans are sold abroad, where its army cannot staff itself except with drunken drug-taking smokers (those who survive to conscription age that is) and which is dependent on immigrants from countries that the people regard with contempt, and as enemies, just to survive. This is what Putin’s State of the Nation message tells me.
A failed state or what?
David Wall
JAPANTIMES.CO.JP

Nobody expects the Bush administration to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention centre at the request of goody-goodies from the United Nations. But the UN’s Committee Against Torture, which called last week for the facility’s closure, isn’t alone in offering that advice. Friends of the United States, such as Britain’s attorney general, have also said so. President Bush should listen to them.
Or to himself. It was Bush who told German television this month: “I very much would like to end Guantanamo.“ He couldn’t do that, he added, because the US Supreme Court had yet to rule on the legality of the military commissions that he has established to try some suspected terrorists.
Actually, the president could shut down Guantanamo any time he wants. But even if he had been right in blaming the Supreme Court for the delay, that excuse has a limited lifespan. The justices are expected to rule soon on a challenge to the military tribunals brought by a Guantanamo inmate who once served as Osama bin Laden’s driver.
The Guantanamo facility, where almost 500 prisoners continue to be held, has outlived whatever usefulness it once had. In 2002, when the centre was opened, the administration arguably could have believed it might obtain valuable intelligence from the suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters confined there. By taking the prisoners to Cuban territory leased by the United States, the administration thought that US law wouldn’t apply.
The Supreme Court disagreed, holding in 2004 that inmates there could challenge their confinement in court. The Bush administration, acting on its own, then devised rules for military commissions that are now before the Supreme Court. Yet only a fraction of Guantanamo inmates are slated to be tried by the commissions, and there is no reason they can’t be confined and tried in the United States.
If that were done, the administration would face the choice of what to do with the majority of Guantanamo’s inmates, who are not targets of military tribunals and who are unlikely at this late date to harbour any useful information.
Even as it called for Guantanamo to be closed, the UN committee warned that inmates shouldn’t be returned to nations where they faced a “real risk“ of being tortured. That’s a legitimate caution, but Guantanamo needn’t remain open while the administration puzzles over what to do.
Saying goodbye to Guantanamo would be more than a symbolic change of policy. Confining detainees in a geographically isolated location encourages abuses by authorities and despair and disruption among inmates.
LATIMES.COM