Mahathir intended to weaken Harapan to lose to Umno in GE15

fmt: Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj (chairperson of Parti Sosialis Malaysia and former Sungai Siput MP) on (extracts on Mahathir):

Mahathir

The events of the past 10 days might be quite bewildering to many Malaysians. Alliances have been forming and dissolving within hours and contradictory statements have been issued by various players. 

Here’s my take on it.

Mahathir Mohamad

Mahathir is at the centre of the latest developments though I do not think that he wanted it to unfold at this point in time. Since the 1960’s, Mahathir has made no secret of his belief that for an ethnic group to succeed in the modern era it needed its share of scientists, bankers, professionals, business people and millionaires – a modern bourgeoisie!

In Mahathir’s assessment, merely preserving the old Malay elite comprising the feudal aristocracy, landlords and the royalty wouldn’t be enough for the Malays to hold their own in the modern world. There needed to be a Malay bourgeoisie. And he has spent the major portion of his life in developing this Malay bourgeoisie, by hook or by crook.

And to be fair to him, he has succeeded to a certain extent. There are now many Malay professionals, academicians, scientists, business people and millionaires.

However, Mahathir feels that there is still a need for the Malaysian state to continue playing an active role in promoting and building the Malay bourgeoisie given the vigour of the Malaysian Chinese business community, the rise of China and the predatory multinationals from the US, Europe and Japan.

And he is apprehensive that the Pakatan Harapan leaders - Lim Guan Eng and Anwar Ibrahim - will not do what is necessary to protect and promote the nascent Malay bourgeoisie. The former believes too much in the free market and is too cosy with Chinese capital, while the latter is too friendly with foreign interests and might agree to compromise the Malaysian state’s capacity to nurture the Malay bourgeoisie – for example by agreeing to the “Investor State Dispute” and “Government Procurement” clauses in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and other similar trade deals.

So Mahathir, I think, was ambivalent about Harapan remaining in power for more than one term from the very start.

For him, Harapan represented the only way to remove the kleptocrats within Umno. He felt that Umno could not be reformed from within as those in power were too entrenched, so he needed to join up with DAP and PKR to cleanse Umno of the “crooks”.

But from the beginning, Mahathir felt that he could not depend on Harapan to safeguard and complete his lifetime project of creating and nurturing the Malay bourgeoise. 

He needed to pass the government to a Malay-majority government which would be committed to continuing the “Malay Agenda”. This is why he brought in MPs from Umno to bolster Bersatu, and why he cosied up with Umno and PAS.

It might also be the reason he promoted Azmin to become a federal minister – so as to weaken PKR by exacerbating the friction between Anwar and Azmin, so that if Bersatu could not be bolstered up enough to play a defining role in Harapan, the weakened Harapan would lose to Umno (cleansed of the worst kleptocrats) in the 15th general election.

This could also be the reason he didn’t countermand Lim’s decision in May-June 2018 to stop subsidy payments of RM300 per month to more than 70,000 traditional fishermen, and the rubber price support system that kicked in and supported 200,000 rubber smallholders each time the price of cup lump (scrap rubber) dipped below RM2.20 per kilogram.

Cabinet meetings take place weekly. It would have been a simple thing for Mahathir to highlight to Lim the political folly of cutting these subsidies given that Harapan had only garnered less than 20 percent of the rural Malay vote and Umno and PAS were going around canvassing the point that the government had passed to non-Malay control and that the well-being of Malays would be undermined.

However, Mahathir kept quiet on this issue, probably thinking to himself “Go ahead if you want to shoot yourself in the foot”.

I see Mahathir as a master politician with very clear aims – clean up Umno, and then ensure the administration of the country is back in the hands of those who genuinely support the agenda to protect and develop the Malay bourgeoisie. And, he has been transparent in his position with regard to the Malay bourgeoisie right from the 1960s.

Disclaimer: The fact I can see where Mahathir is coming from does not mean that I agree with his approach to building the Malaysian nation. And I haven’t touched on the harm he has done to the Malaysian poor of all races by his programme of privatisation. Nor have I brought in the various ways he seriously weakened institutions like the judiciary and concentrated power in the office of the prime minister as these important issues aren’t central to the power struggle that is taking place.