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The Asian Wall Street Journal
5th December 2001

Terror Attacks Have Unintended Effect Of Reducing Protests Against Mahathir

By BARRY WAIN
Staff Reporter

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. have put Malaysia's Islamic opposition on the defensive and relieved, at least temporarily, pressure on Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's beleaguered administration.

The reaction to the attacks has polarized Malaysian political forces already badly split in the multiracial, predominantly Muslim nation of 23 million people. As fearful ethnic Chinese and Indians line up behind Dr. Mahathir, Malaysia's Muslim-led opposition coalition - forged in 1999 as an alternative to the National Front government - has begun to fall apart.

"Three months ago, everyone was preparing to write Dr. Mahathir's political obituary at the next election," which must be held by late 2004, says Lim Kit Siang, national chairman of the opposition Democratic Action Party. "But now it seems that everybody is ready to write the opposition's obituary."

Both assessments could turn out to be exaggerated. Few of Dr. Mahathir's underlying political problems have been resolved in the fierce debate over the political role of Islam that has followed Washington's decision to organize a global coalition against terrorism. In his 21st year as premier and 76 years of age this month, he has found the going particularly tough since he sacked and jailed his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998. While the government retained its two-thirds parliamentary majority in the 1999 general election, Dr. Mahathir's United Malays National Organization, the core of the governing coalition, lost 22 of its 94 seats.

Skillful Management

The suicide strikes in the U.S. and Washington's military retaliation against Afghanistan initially presented a dilemma for Dr. Mahathir, a Muslim moderate whose support base among ethnic Malays has been seriously eroded in recent years by the conservative opposition Parti Islam SeMalaysia, or PAS. Many Malays - including members of Dr. Mahathir's own United Malays National Organization - opposed the U.S. military campaign, and the prime minister risked alienating them by aligning too closely with Washington. But the events also presented Dr. Mahathir with an opportunity to justify - and step up - moves against his Islamic opponents at home and improve long-sour relations with the U.S.

Dr. Mahathir has managed the problem adroitly so far. By deciding to back the U.S. antiterrorism campaign, while opposing the bombing of Afghanistan, Dr. Mahathir reaped some immediate benefits. He won praise from U.S. President George W. Bush for getting on board early, almost certainly ensuring that Washington will mute its criticism of the Malaysian government's handling of Datuk Seri Anwar and its frequent use of the Internal Security Act to detain suspects without trial.

The fact that extremists allied with Osama bin Laden were prepared to kill thousands of innocent civilians in the name of Islam also appeared to vindicate Dr. Mahathir's crackdown on alleged Muslim militants earlier this year. Where many Malaysians had been skeptical of the government's motives, seeing the arrests as an excuse to discredit PAS and suppress legitimate dissent, they are now "prepared to give the prime minister the benefit of the doubt," says the Democratic Action Party's Mr. Lim.

PAS leaders, by contrast, chose to declare a jihad, commonly interpreted as an Islamic holy war, against the U.S., which "frightened and alienated non-Malays, as well as moderate Malays," says Mr. Lim. "There is no doubt that non-Malays have deserted the opposition."

Dose of Reality

Abdul Razak Abdullah Baginda, executive director of the generally pro- government Malaysian Strategic Research Center, believes the episode has "ended the middle class's infatuation with the opposition." That process began, he says, over such questions as the inequitable distribution of wealth and burgeoned with Datuk Seri Anwar's imprisonment. Current middle-class disenchantment with the opposition "is actually reality creeping in," he says.

Among those frightened by PAS was the Democratic Action Party, which withdrew from the PAS-led Alternative Front in late September. The DAP was increasingly frustrated by PAS's determination to push for the creation of an Islamic state, party officials say, and the terrorist acts in the U.S. were a catalyst for the decision to withdraw.

The departure of the DAP, which represents mainly ethnic Chinese interests, tarnished the Alternative Front's "multiethnic credentials," says Chandra Muzaffar, a political scientist and former vice chairman of Parti Keadilan Nasional, another member of the front. The three parties that remain in the alliance are all ethnic Malay-based.

New symptoms of trouble for the opposition have already cropped up in Malaysia's Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah. Although those states don't always reflect national trends, events there nevertheless indicate that the Alternative Front has lost appeal. One opposition party in Sabah, which defected from the National Front years ago, applied recently to return to the ruling coalition, while in Sarawak the National Front won 60 of 62 seats in a Legislative Assembly election on Sept. 27. PAS and Keadilan didn't capture a single seat.

Looking Ahead

A consensus is developing in the upper echelons of UMNO that Dr. Mahathir, who has talked of retiring during his current five-year term, should stay on and lead the party at the next general election. And the government might call an election as early as next year, UMNO officials say, to give Dr. Mahathir another five years to check Islamic militancy and strengthen the leadership credentials of his current No. 2, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

But while renewed support from non-Muslims, as well as urban Malays, almost guarantees the National Front's continued domination, Dr. Mahathir heads an UMNO perceived by critics as still beset with corruption and cronyism, a situation that turned some Malays against him in the first place. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that many rural Malays, far from being impressed by Dr. Mahathir's stand on terrorism, view his warm embrace of the U.S. as servile, while they see nothing extreme in PAS's jihad pronouncement.

John Funston, an Australian scholar who specializes in Malaysia, points out that Dr. Mahathir himself has sometimes taken strong positions in support of Islamic issues, notably in criticizing Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians. For its part, PAS has made it clear that it wasn't advocating so much a call to arms, "but to use other forms of influence, including demonstration's and prayer, to oppose U.S. actions," Dr. Funston says.