A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (38 page)

Unfortunately, the protection and privileges accorded by the NEP may weaken the Malays further by lulling the next generation into complacency, thinking that the NEP’s affirmative action will always be there for them to fall back upon. I have spoken about this danger many times, likening the NEP to crutches which, when used too long, would result in atrophy of the muscles. The NEP can make the users so dependent that their inherent capability regresses.

The argument that I originally made in 
The Malay Dilemma
 was that, for a variety of reasons, Malays submitted easily to their immediate environment, both physical and human. They like the easy way out and fail to rise above challenges. In time, a set of dominant cultural traits surfaced, which encouraged compliant adaptation and discouraged effort. With this, Malays stopped trying to adapt to changing circumstances but remained laid-back and compliant.

In time, this cultural orientation became a major impediment to successful Malay engagement with the modern world. This is because, under colonial rule, they were marginalised and were culturally demotivated. I had proposed in 
The Malay Dilemma
 a way to break out of this bind. The solution was to provide as many opportunities as possible and for the Malays to make the best of the chances given. How would they respond? Would they seize and make the most of the opportunities? Or would they take them for granted and enjoy them without serious effort? Would they treat these prospects as a temporary privilege or a permanent entitlement?

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know the answer: while some Malays and other Bumiputera have taken up the challenge, the majority regrettably have not. Now, what we appear to have is a new culture of indigenous entitlement. This new environment impedes rather than promotes the growth of modern Malay cultural, professional, economic and entrepreneurial competence. Far from supporting professional Malay capabilities and competitiveness, it dampens the desire to strive.

Still, I strongly believe that Malays have all the capabilities of other people. Take the Malay woman, for example. When I was a boy, women were confined to the kitchen and regarded as mere chattel or vessels for producing children. It was believed that they had limited intellectual capacity and would not benefit from education. Fortunately, in Independent Malaysia, girls were given the same educational opportunities as boys and the results have been amazing. Today, over 60 per cent of the students in our universities are girls, including Malay girls. Moreover, they now make up a big percentage of our professionals. In some of our hospitals, almost all the specialists are women. I do not think that women are inherently better—they have simply availed themselves of the opportunities to work and study hard. The boys, though equally capable, have not. The most recent surveys indicate that the boys are missing from the universities and the workplace. Could it be that they have grown complacent and more indulgent of leisurely pursuits? Among young Malay boys in particular, the
mat rempit
phenomenon
[1]
 has obviously contributed to this imbalance.

History has many examples of a backward people not only catching up, but outstripping those ahead of them. The Muslims were progressing at a phenomenal rate when the Europeans were still stuck in the Dark Ages. This state of affairs was not to last. Seeing the level of Arab skill and education, the Christian Europeans set out to acquire their knowledge. Unfortunately, at the same time, Muslims decided to focus their learning on religion and nothing else. In the end, the ignorant Europeans became stronger and culturally better endowed than the Muslim Arabs and, ever since then, Europeans have maintained their advanced status. The Arabs have made no effort to regain the knowledge for which they had once been famous. Had the abilities of the Europeans and Arabs been inherent, their relative positions and strength would never have changed. It was the value system developed by the Europeans and the rejection of Islamic philosophical and intellectual culture by the Arabs that resulted in this astounding historical reversal.

The Malays can also change their fate, but to do so they must face a new dilemma: to persist with the NEP would mean taking away the need to be self-reliant, yet abolishing it could weaken the Malays and undermine their political position in their own land. The Malays have a saying which aptly captures the predicament now facing the community: 
Telan mati mak, luah mati bapak
 (If you swallow, your mother dies. If you spit it out, your father dies).

There is a belief among most Malays that they will always rule this country since they make up the majority of the population. But this will not hold true if they are divided. If this happens, other interested parties will move into the power gap, making the dilemma of discerning Malays even more acute.

No one in Malaysia was prepared to publish 
The Malay Dilemma
 so I took it to Donald Moore, a publishing firm in Singapore. They were immediately keen and asked for all rights, including film rights. Making money was the last thing on my mind: I only wanted to be heard and so I signed everything they asked.

The book was a runaway success and was immediately banned by the Government. As with any banned material, it was soon in great demand and Malaysians would travel to Singapore to smuggle it in.

I fervently hoped that my ideas might now help shape the country as it searched for a new foundation and direction. I was told that Tun Razak asked the panel then drafting the New Economic Policy to read it. Whether or not they did I do not know, but several ideas I detailed in the book are similar to the recommendations in the NEP.

With this, my support among the Malays grew, but I was still adamant about not starting my own party. The Malays had hung together successfully during the time of the Malayan Union, and I had no intention of splitting the community further than PAS already had. Few people, especially Malays, thought this way. Perhaps they did not have the long perspective that comes with age, or the experience of watching the power of the Malays when united. Splintering the community seemed of no consequence to most.

At heart, I remained an UMNO member. It was the only party that I believed in. But I could no longer accept the Tunku’s leadership and his simplistic belief that the Malays would always be content with jobs in the Government. I also did not like his being an Anglophile, or his devotion to the Commonwealth and all things European. It was not that I thought the Tunku was not “Malay” enough. Indeed, I deeply appreciated what he had accomplished in the past, when he had been instrumental in leading the nation to Independence. He was much more successful as a leader of a Third World country than most and whether or not he was the right man for it, he was the one who had done it. Dato’ Onn, who should have been the one, went against the party and in that sense, the Tunku was much more adept politically. He structured Malayan and Malaysian politics to make his agenda acceptable to all communities, including the Malays themselves. But as the 1969 General Election approached, his easygoing policies became of great concern, not just to me but to other young Malays. They subjected him to unprecedented questioning, which was something that he was ill-suited to handle.

The Tunku seemed content to hand Malays civil service jobs instead of getting them actively involved in the economy. Moreover, considering how the British had tried to impose the Malayan Union on us, I thought the Tunku’s subsequent pro-British stand was unacceptable. Where was the anger, the outrage, for what they had tried to do? What made it worse was that the British did not even care to treat him with due respect. When he had gone to study at Cambridge University he had been initially denied student accommodation, simply because he was not British. He had to contact his father, the Sultan of Kedah, before the university officials agreed to provide accommodation for him where the white students stayed. When the Tunku became Chief Minister, the British allocated him a broken-down house that leaked so badly he could hardly sleep at night. I could not understand how or why he was willing to forget all this. In short, in the Malay interest, I thought it was time for a change in Malay leadership.

So did many Malays, including many who honoured and respected the Tunku for his astute captaining against canny British obstruction during our pursuit of 
Merdeka
. But he could not go on living on his past glories while the Malay future became ever more bleak and uncertain. That was why we felt he should go; the question was, when would he?

ENDNOTE

[
1
] The term
mat rempit
refers to motorcyle daredevils who race through the city streets at night, often in large groups.

Towards the end of his time as Prime Minister, it must have been obvious to the Tunku that he had become very unpopular. He somehow believed that I was responsible for the public’s changed attitude towards him and that I was working with Tun Razak to get rid of him. This was the talk at the time among UMNO leaders; it has also been recently alleged by Dr K.K. Soong.
[1]
 Certainly, our exchange of letters made it clear that the Tunku and I didn’t see eye to eye. When you quarrel with someone, it is easier to write something down and send him a letter than to go to him and tell him to his face that he is wrong. But the fact that I “went public” with my criticism of him did not mean that I was scheming to overthrow him, as he seemed to believe. When the Tunku later publicly explained that he had been Prime Minister
long enough and wanted to retire, he would continue to tell people that he thought his removal had been engineered by Tun Razak and those whom he described as communists.
 

In a Radio Malaysia interview on 26 August 1970, the Tunku said that there would be no change in government policy after he resigned. Perhaps he meant to provide reassurance of continuity, but I did not take it to mean that his successor Tun Razak would not change anything. Whenever a new person takes over the leadership of a country, policies must change. A new leader wants to show that he is different; he wants to leave his own mark on the nation. Occasionally, in an effort to show how different he is, he may dismantle the policies of the previous leader or try to highlight mistakes that had been made. He may want to show how much more in touch his Government is with the needs of the country and people.

This, of course, is human nature, but it is sometimes a dangerous course to take. Such changes may not embody a clearer understanding of how government is best conducted for the country’s good. Yet a new leader may have the freshness of mind and spirit to correct what is evidently wrong or to inject renewed vigour into the pursuit of the previous Government’s objectives.

I believed firmly that Tun Razak would be far more proactive than the Tunku had been in helping Malays enter the business and commercial world. I also believed he would alter the Tunku’s very pro-West and pro-Commonwealth foreign policy. If these changes were made, particularly with regard to Malay participation in business, I would work very hard to try and rejoin UMNO.

Since the 1969 General Election, UMNO had not been officially active. But after Parliament reconvened in 1971 and the ban on politics that had been imposed after the 1969 riots was lifted, UMNO planned to have its General Assembly in January of 1971. At this meeting, new office-bearers would be elected. Generally, people welcomed this as a sign that things had settled down enough for the country to pick up political activities once again. Everyone—especially the Malays—now expected the Government to attend promptly to their dissatisfaction.

During the assembly the late Tan Sri A. Samad Ismail of the 
Straits Times
 newspaper, who had been a member of the AAPSO mission I had led when I was a Member of Parliament, wrote that the party was striking out on a new course. What UMNO would now do under Tun Razak would be quite different from what had been done under the Tunku, who had been very pro-West. Tun Razak wanted to be neutral and make friends with everyone. I was sceptical at first and held back because I wanted to see what changes and policies the new UMNO leadership would introduce.

In the assembly’s party elections there was to be no challenge against Tun Razak as UMNO President and Tun Dr Ismail as Deputy President. They were already the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively. But there would be an open contest for the positions of Vice-Presidents and below.

Some UMNO divisions in Kedah and Perlis wanted to propose my name for the Vice-Presidency in the belief that it would help promote the ideas that I had laid out in 
The Malay Dilemma.
 But I was not even an UMNO member at that time, nor could I be certain that my plans to rejoin the party would succeed. When questioned by the Press, I pointed out that I was not eligible to contest and I appealed to UMNO divisions not to nominate me.

Shortly after I spoke at the PAS by-election at Kapar, UMNO Youth Chief Datuk Harun Idris came up to Kedah to see me, accompanied by his close associates Aziz Salehuddin and Yahya Zakaria. They tried to get me to sign an apology letter so that I could apply to rejoin UMNO. I wanted to return to the party very much, of course, but this was not the way I was going to do it. I felt I had nothing to apologise for—what I had done was to make statements that I believed were completely factual and reflected Malay sentiments.

I had always suspected that I had been expelled not at the wish of the party, but on the specific wishes of the Tunku. Of course there were some who may have wanted me out anyway—Tan Sri Senu Abdul Rahman and perhaps Tan Sri Syed Jaafar Hassan Albar, who probably saw me as an upstart, a pushy young politician who was not sufficiently respectful of the Tunku’s leadership. But an apology was out of the question because it would mean losing all credibility. I was also not prepared to crawl back, resentful and humiliated. That would not be a return to the party, but a grudging surrender. Pressmen called soon after to ask whether I would apologise but I stood by my previous statement. That, evidently, did not endear me further to some leaders in the party.