The Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, is bowing out of office in his own inimitable style: railing against Jews, the United States, and anyone hoping to see the end of authoritarian government in his country.
In his last full day of 22 years in power, Asia’s longest-serving elected leader said yesterday that the Jews deserved sympathy for their past suffering, but should ”never think they are the chosen people”, because their struggle was about territory, not religion.
Jews had no right to seize Palestinian land just because they were forced to flee persecution in Europe, he said.
”They have taken land belonging to the Muslims. Suppose a part of Britain or a part of America was taken away and given to the Jews as Israel. Do you think the Americans are going to sit quietly and say ‘Welcome’ and all that? They won’t.”
The comments were the latest in a fortnight-long offensive which began at an Islamic leaders’ summit when Dr Mahathir (77) said in a speech which also criticised Muslims that Jews ”[ruled] the world by proxy” and got ”others to fight and die for them”.
The remarks were praised by his audience but condemned around the world, and in Malaysia, where analysts said he should have differentiated between Jews and political Zionists.
Dr M, as he is often known, has regularly courted controversy with colourful verbal attacks on the west, financial speculators, human rights defenders, South African apartheid, and anyone who opposed him.
Lady Thatcher once said of him: ”We both believe in speaking our minds. It’s just as well he is a man, for he’d have been lethal with a handbag.”
On Wednesday night he threw more of his seemingly inexhaustible vitriol at the United States.
When asked about religion in America, he said: ”Some people say that we here have no freedom of religion. In reality, the people in that country are the ones who were forced to embrace a religion.”
People, ”who were abducted from Africa, were brought to that country and made slaves, tortured and forced to change their religion, including Muslim slaves, forced to convert”.
The many domestic victims of his term of office were mainly those who sought to loosen his iron grip on the political system, maintained by tightly controlling the press, emasculating the judiciary, and regularly using draconian laws like the Internal Security Act, which provides for indefinite detention without charge.
The most prominent of these was Anwar Ibrahim, long expected to be his successor, who fell foul of him in 1998, was sacked, and then convicted of corruption and sodomy on charges which appeared to be largely contrived. He is unlikely to be released for at least five years.
At his final parliamentary session yesterday, Mahathir said that any relaxing of the current arrangements would be disastrous.
”Anarchy can take place because of an obsession with democratic freedoms,” he said. ”The belief that if democracy is implemented then everything will be well has no basis, especially if democracy is imposed immediately.”
His successor, the deputy prime minister Abdullah Badawi, is expected to heed the advice, because he has yet to cement his position in his party, the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), and the country. ”I think we’re going to see a refurbishment job and not much more,” said Farish Noor, a political analyst.
Badawi (63) who takes over this afternoon, is expected to call an election in April at which the National Front, which comprises Umno and its 13 minor allies is likely to strengthen its position and so make reform even more distant.
”If you’re in no danger of losing your incumbency, there’s no incentive to reform,” said Chandra Muzaffar, chairman of the Malaysian thinktank the International Movement for a Just World.
Analysts believe that Badawi is unlikely to encounter a significant grassroots call for reform, because, on the surface, Mahathir is leaving a strong economic legacy.
During his tenure Malaysia was transformed from a rubber and tin economy into the world’s 18th largest trading state.
Incomes tripled, the proportion of the country’s 23-million people in poverty fell from 35% to 5%, and Malaysia rode out the Asian financial crisis better than its neighbours, thanks to Dr Mahathir’s ignoring the IMF. – Guardian Unlimited