To cling on to power, Mahathir uses every means at his disposal whether legal or illegal, moral or immoral. When it comes to scare tactics, phantom voters, vote buying, dirty tricks, outright cheating and political oppression, Mahathir is second to none. Tengku Razaleigh bore the brunt of his depraved arsenal in the fight for the Umno presidency in 1987. Mahathir had used money politics and phantom voters against him and barely scrapped through with 51% of the vote. Winning is what counts however, not the means used to win. The 1999 general elections was the dirtiest in history with not just fear, but outright manipulation of the election commission and total abuse of the mass media to secure victory. With the election out of the way, he launched a political crackdown on opposition leaders and opposition newspapers are harassed as a prelude to their eventual banning
But how can victory by deceit and cheating be morally conscionable or personally satisfying to anybody, even Mahathir? Isn’t democracy about getting a mandate from the majority and the right to govern comes from the popular support of the people? The fact is that dictators see themselves as superior beings rising above the common herd. The unenlightened masses who reject him are viewed as fools who do not know what is good for them and so extraordinary and even amoral methods are justified to bypass their limited intelligence. Dictators believe that their holding onto power is ultimately for the common good and so the end justify the means.
And also it must be mentioned that Mahathir was never a man governed by moral or spiritual values. We can see in his 18 years rule the shallow materialism he embraces while intangible values like social justice and universal concepts of truth, fairness and human rights are kicked to the rear. To him a society’s progress is measured solely by material progress like industrialization and increasing income. Social progress counts little if at all for he has scant respect for democracy or human rights. His highlights of success are the tallest building, the biggest dam, the biggest airport and other worldly physical entities. His vision of 2020 is one of soaring towers and gleaming highways for being a developed nation means achieving a level of materialistic development even though the country’s subjects are tied to the yoke of feudalism. There is in him an intellectual arrogance and disdainful disregard for the spiritual values of life and the social development of man.
And so we are a society in which morality is hollowing out rapidly. Genuine truth can be demolished and replaced with “official truth” if politically expedient and the authorities will pursue their version of the “truth” relentlessly even if it means prosecuting the good and trampling on innocent lives. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the Anwar Ibrahim persecution.. Sukma’s false confession extracted by torture became the “truth” no matter what his protestations in court and the AG slapped another charge of perjury on him for daring to stick to his real story. Datuk Murad’s unsubstantiated allegations of Anwar’s master accounts became “truth” immediately while documented corruption of Rafidah and Daim were brusquely ignored by the authorities. Harakah’s editor was arrested for printing an article saying that the police, the AG, the mass media and the judiciary acted in conspiracy against Anwar which happened to be the truth. However we have a subservient justice system ready to impose the establishment’s version of the “truth” and we have no doubt that he will be found guilty. Everything that the opposition says are branded as lies without having to answer to them. Lies have become truth and truth has become falsehood in Mahathir’s Malaysia. We are walking down the road to a morally bankrupt society.
Law and order in the society has been compromised by the selective prosecution of opposition leaders and court judgements which always favour the government no matter how flimsy the case. Lim Guan Eng’s case is a prime example of how an accuser who tries to bring wrong-doers to justice can be jailed while the guilty goes scot-free. The same thing is going to happen to Mohamed Ezam, the Youth Chief of Keadilan who circulated documented corruption of Rafidah Aziz and Rahim Thamby Chik. He was charged under the Official Secrets Act so the documents must be genuine but why is no action taken against Rafidah and Thamby Chik? The police investigates the contents of the trashy book of 50 reasons why Anwar cannot become PM, but ignores Anwar’s documented reports of corruption involving top politicians. Neither was the ACA interested to investigate Anwar’s reports or the long outstanding Perwaja Steel case but jumps up from their stupor to investigate Datuk Abdul Murad’s unsubstantiated and undocumented affidavit.
The public perception of a flawed justice system has been well vindicated with bizarre cases like the conviction of Sukma and Munawar who were first forced to confess as sodomy victims and then the victims were sentenced to 6 months jail each. However, no action was taken against Azazan Abu Bakar who alleged being sodomized 15 times. Datuk Nallakarupan was first charged under mandatory death penalty for forgetting to renew his license for 125 lousy bullets and then given the savage sentence of 3 years for what should have been merit no more than a fine. The jailing of Canadian journalist Murray Hiebert for a mild little article about a suit involving a school debate team seemed totally puzzling on the face of it but the reality points to the deep corruption in the judiciary. Many could infer that he was jailed for the angering the wife of an appeal court judge who was on good terms with the Chief Justice.
Then there is the ability of tainted men and women to hold on to power, to escape punishment and even to make a comeback. On the political front we have people like Rafidah Aziz, Daim and Megat Junid to name a few carrying on business as usual despite being exposed of corruption. Those who escaped punishment include Rahim Thamby Chik for raping an underaged girl, Mohamed Taib for acquisition of money and properties way beyond his official means and of course the big fish who squandered billions, Tan Sri Eric Chia. Holiday snapshots of Chief Justice Eusoff Chin’s paid trip to New Zealand with attorney V.K. Lingam are in the public domain, but it does not seem to matter much to Eusoff who still holds on securely to his job.
We are also expected to accept deep contradictions which will create a generation of confused Malaysians. We are repeatedly told by Mahathir to beware of foreigners who are out to colonize us yet foreigners are actively wooed for trade and investment besides being given huge contracts in our rush to develop as fast as possible. The foreign press is branded as a bunch of liars ganging up on Malaysia except when they happen to print something favourable in which case they are quoted and reprinted endlessly. There seem to be shifting standards of good and bad depending on political expediency. Leaders are good only when they are in the government fold, once they fall from grace, they are accused of everything under the sun.
There is so little regard for public opinion that gross injustices are perpetrated in the full glare of publicity and half-baked explanations given as if people are stupid. The ACA claims that the Perwaja Steel investigation is taking so long (and it may never be completed) because “many witnesses are overseas” although the big fish is in Malaysia and all the crimes were committed on Malaysian soil. The Election Commission does not bother to explain why it cannot register 680,000 voters even after 8 months. People are told to “accept the judgement of the court” as if the court is not the corrupt, subservient tool that it has become. This disregard for public opinion extend to the political elite. Leaders who have been publicly accused of wrong-doing are so confident of their position and protection under Mahathir that they do not even bother to respond. Ling Liong Sik keeps a stony silence on his son’s coming into billionaire status under suspicious circumstances. Neither did he bother to respond to Datuk Soh Chee Wen’s police report implicating him of various wrong-doings.
Mahathir is leading us into a society which is based on material progress but no moral foundation. It will certainly not be a nice place to live. The government’s focus on worldly materialism as benchmarks of progress and the pay, pay, pay privatization policies will create a breed of super-materialistic people. The official tolerance of high level corruption in public figures means that all strata of society will become very corrupt in both private and public sectors. The fact that innocent persons can be sent to jail violates our sense of justice. The reversal of truth and lies lead us to believe that there is no absolute truth or absolute good, it all depends on which side you are on. As for leaders, the current crop of sycophantic, greedy, money-driven yes men and women are certainly no role models for our young. Our heroes have become men like Azizan Abu Bakar and women like Ummi Hafilda Ali who clawed their way up to fame and money on the ladder of lies and deceit. The mass media continue to peddle one-sided one-dimensional views of the government while deep contradictions which offends our sensibilities are cheerfully disseminated without question. The trampling of social awareness translate into apathy and a lack of civic consciousness. As for religion there will be two extremes, those who discard religion as inapplicable in this world of dishonesty and deceit and those who turn to the embrace of religion to resolve their conflicts and so become religious extremists.
All this moral bankruptcy has come about due to the incredible obstinacy of one man to cling on to power and who is willing to perpetrate and tolerate whatever evil and immoral acts to achieve his end. Materialism and economic progress is the excuse and the panacea for the abandonment of morality. The result will be a physically developed but sterile society, prosperous but spiritually empty and inherently soulless. Perhaps we will become a shallow, materialistic and spiritually barren society where people rush mindlessly for cheap plastic toys to the extent of fighting and camping overnight for them like what happened to our neighbour. People’s thinking do become infantile under strict authoritarian control. And we must remember that a society with no moral foundation is built on shifting sands. It is in danger of disintegrating or being overtaken by outsiders. A civilized society is held together by moral code which serves as the unifying fabric for people to live together, not by shallow materialism. History is littered with the ruins of once great empires which collapsed or were overrun as a result of moral decay fostered by mad emperors or megalomaniac dictators.
Thankfully society tries to correct itself as greater affluence and education cause greater social awareness and increasing demands for upholding social and moral values. This presents a natural obstacle to Mahathir’s one-dimensional vision of society because economic and social progress tend to go hand in hand. As people become more affluent and more educated they become socially conscious and new demands emerge. They demand social justice, democracy, accountability and transparency of those in power. They find it difficult to stomach the deep corruption in BN, the money politics, the protection of the corrupt, the sweetheart privatization deals which burden the public and the inequitable distribution of wealth. They cannot accept the humiliation and injustice in the political persecution of Anwar Ibrahim. They will not agree to sweep corruption and abuses under the carpet in exchange for continued economic progress. Economic growth cannot be accepted as the reason to overlook all manner of social ills because it is only what is expected of any responsible government. But we must remember that although society tries to resist the degradation of moral values it is not always successful. An overly strong autocratic leader who uses brutal and repressive methods to crush all dissent can impose his dictatorial will and distort society’s values for the period that he is in power.
Fortunately we have not become the sheep-like conformists that Mahathir
wants us to be or like the three monkeys that see, hear and speak no evil
of his regime. If we have, we would not be the vibrant society that we
are, we would be like dead people walking. But here lies Mahathir’s dilemma.
How do you bring material progress and economic development to the society
and yet hold back its sense of social consciousness? On one hand, Mahathir
wants to bring Malaysia into the 21st century as a modern, progressive
state ready to face the challenges of globalization, but on the other hand
he wants the people to remain backward in their thinking. He wants Malaysians
to embrace the wonders of information technology but they are supposed
to swallow whatever the government tells them no matter how ridiculous.
Malaysians are expected to be creative and competitive in the world market
although a repressive authoritarian environment governed by fear does not
breed creativity or ambition. They are expected to remain socially backward
in their sense of justice and democracy, to tolerate open corruption and
accept sycophantic leaders like Ling Liong Sik and Samy Vellu. In short
Mahathir is grappling with the problem of creating a modern state, rich
and developed in the material sense but locked in the social structure
of feudalism and populated by conforming idiots. His Multimedia Super Corridor
is a microcosm of that dilemma. Eagerly desirous of developing a world
class IT industry, he had to forbear censoring of the internet to keep
the MSC alive. The result is an uncontrolled medium which criticize him
and his authoritarian ways. The Internet may not be a mass medium now but
as it grows in reach and importance, how will Mahathir resolve this dilemma?
KG
22/02/2000