Opinion Editorials, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Mahathir's Hard Act to Follow
Arab News
31 October 2003
His last days in office may have been marred by controversy over his remarks about Jews, but Mahathir Mohamad, who steps down today as Malaysia’s prime minister after 22 years in office, will not be remembered for that. He will be remembered as the man who transformed a strife-ridden, undeveloped nation into an economic giant. It is a tremendous achievement.
His sheer political longevity is itself remarkable. At least half of all Malaysians cannot remember anyone else as their leader. But it is what he did in those years that explains that longevity. People have perhaps forgotten that when he came to power, the country was plagued by race riots between the country’s economically dominant Chinese minority and the resentful majority Malays, that a third of the population lived in poverty, and that the country’s only economic assets were rubber, palm oil and tin. Putting into practice his belief in strong government, he gave Malaysia stability and prosperity.
Today, poverty is down to 5 percent, the population is urban with a large and growing middle class, it is electronics and financial services that run the economy, not rubber, and the capital Kuala Lumpur is a major international business center.
These are the achievements that will be remembered, not the allegations of cronyism and stifling dissent. That is why, five times in a row, Malaysians voted for him — a record in a genuine representative democracy anywhere in the world. That is why so many of the younger, upwardly mobile Malaysians supported him at the last election despite the earlier turmoil following the imprisonment of his charismatic former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. That is why the country’s Chinese and Tamil minorities have consistently backed him and are sorry to see him go, even though when he first came to power many of them feared his pro-Malay views. That is why he leaves office a genuinely popular leader. He has provided national unity through prosperity. And to those who accuse him of misusing power, the fact is that he has not been forced from office. He retires from the scene gracefully.
He has also been admired far beyond his country for standing up to those powers that seem to control so much of what happens in the world — Western governments, the World Bank, the IMF, the multinationals, the awesome power of the international money market traders, and for taking tough but in the long run right decisions. The sweeping capital controls to deal with the currency crisis of the late 1990s were unpopular but they worked. They helped Malaysia weather the storm. He has been admired too for showing what practical, modernizing Islam can achieve, even though a number of Malaysians have other views on that.
His will be a hard act to follow.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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