The politics of chauvinism; the roles of Mahathir, Anwar, LKS and Najib (Part 2 of 4)
Umar Mukhtar
Anwar Ibrahim, at one time the enfant terrible of Malaysian politics, is his own worst enemy. One has the feeling that chauvinism wasn’t his true passion of choice. Politics and oratory were, and they both go hand in hand. A consummate politician, he was just opportunistic in riding the currency of Malaysian politics. He could as easily change to another currency if it suited the progress of his ambition. He is too gifted for his own good.
His schoolmates remember him as a Sukarno-type orator spewing nationalistic bombasticity. His university-mates remember him as that nationalist but with a strong activistic religious flavour that was the craze then. Then when he became the Minister of Finance, he was that suave and almost debonair corporate figure preaching new gospels of worldly missions. Now, after being expelled from that haven, he is a repentant reformist against the very things that he was complicit.
Whatever he truly is, almost all those who were close to him remember him as a liar, pretender and philanderer. How he could be all these, and yet carry on a religious facade in his public career, was a measure of the man’s extraordinary skill at plain bluffing. Such a gift finally led to his own fall from grace. My grandfather used to tell me that it is not what one is endowed with that determines one’s destiny in life, but one’s control of one’s human tendencies.
Being chauvinistic, which was fitting to UMNO, a party defined by race, his seemingly religious disposition and activism made him useful to the then prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. As the minister of education, he did not achieve much beyond politicising the education of our youths. Sending non-Mandarin speakers as headmasters of government Chinese schools was his way of saying who the boss was.
School to him was not really just a place for learning and the questioning of norms but a place of opportunity for the government to indoctrinate. The results are seen today; schools that churn out rote-learning robots and diploma mills that produce unemployables. He was allowed by Mahathir to run rampant with his ‘Penyerapan Nilai-Nilai Islam’ policy and actually almost turned the schools into religious institutions if not for Mahathir’s caution. Not many know of this.
As a minister of finance, his lacklustre performance ended with his capitulation to the demands of international institutions in the 1999 financial crisis, to earn himself the status of a poster-boy of internationalism when he was later persecuted by his ex-mentor. As a DPM, Anwar was Mahathir’s handyman, trouble-shooter and moneyman, especially in the setting up of UMNO in Sabah. In these activities he excelled, but the non-Muslims were wary of him.
Anwar’s chauvinism was expressed through his ministerial actions, some were quite well-disguised, but mostly were blatant acts of ‘Might is Right’. His condescending comments when trying to solve a problem at an Indian temple in Penang is still fresh in our memories. The highlight of his deputy prime ministership was the red carpet treatment reserved for heads of governments meted out for him by William Cohen, then the US Secretary of Defence.
It apparently got to his head and he started to inch his boss out. After the infamous Pulau Sibu incident where he had started to rally his troops, Anwar was duly persecuted by Mahathir. While the non-Malays were sympathetic to his plight, it was not enough to erase memories of his chauvinism. They rallied to Mahathir, in spite of his being one of the original ‘Ultras’ that advocated what is now understood as ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ or Malay supremacy.
Upon Anwar’s initial release from prison followed by him being rejected by UMNO leaders who he had hoped would take him back into UMNO, Anwar had no choice but to offer his skills to his former enemies. They accepted him despite nagging concerns about his past. He may have repented in his politics but apparently not in his personal undesirable habits and he got into trouble again. Whether his present incarceration was justified or not, will remain a footnote of political history.
Similarly, like his boss, without chauvinist politics where would Anwar be? In all, he was a poor strategist, and a bad manager, and without his previous extraordinary skills at rabble-rousing chauvinistic sentiments, he could have been a highly successful snake-oil salesman. But as of now, he is an inclusive leader. Will that last?
Next: After his warnings of the presence of time-bombs in Malaysia, LKS helped to build more bombs because without these bombs, he would be redundant.
The politics of chauvinism; the roles of Mahathir, Anwar, LKS and Najib (Part 1 of 4)
