A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (48 page)

But at this point his health was failing. Even in 1973, just after I had returned to UMNO, when he came for a meeting with state-level party officials in Sungai Petani I could see immediately that he was unwell. Still, he continued, even though it clearly took a great effort.

I learnt a lot from Tun Razak. He was a doer. The Tunku had left almost all the administrative tasks of running the Government to him, and he understood that preparations had to be carried out before plans could be implemented. He was a sincere leader who truly wanted to do something for the country and the Malays. His tendency to favour me was apparent to everyone in the party and naturally caused some jealousy. There was talk about my being his blue-eyed boy, but still I found myself unable to be too familiar with him. We did not socialise, but in all matters of politics I had grown to rely on his judgment and support.

One day in 1975, we were at a function at Parliament House shortly before he was supposed to fly to London. I was among the last to take my leave. Just before I did so, Tun Razak called me aside. He had visibly lost weight by then, but I was still taken aback when he told me that he was suffering from a blood disease and would be seeking treatment in England. He probably told me because he felt that, as a doctor, I would understand. I was very distressed by the news. Shortly after I saw him off at Subang International Airport, I called his doctor and learnt that he was in the advanced stages of leukaemia. I knew then that he was not going to recover. There was no effective treatment for cancer. One might hope for remission, but even then the disease would return.

Later, I learnt that many of the people who surrounded Tun Razak were planning to visit him in London. I considered this unwise. He badly needed rest and I was concerned that they would disturb him. But many of his closest friends did go and I heard that they tried to keep his spirits up by persuading him to have new suits made and to dine on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at Simpsons-on-the-Strand, his favourite restaurant. I hope their presence did give him some cheer because, despite medical treatment, the cancer did not go into remission. Tun Razak died in London at the age of 54 on 14 January 1976.

Hasmah and I had just returned from vacationing in Indonesia when we heard the news. For me it was devastating, a personal tragedy. The public was shocked by the news of his death, as few people knew how seriously ill he had been. Even most of Tun Razak’s political colleagues had not been aware of the true state of his health. Ministers and senior Government officials gathered at Subang International Airport when his body was brought back home one evening a few days later. Many in the crowd were crying. I myself could not stop my tears from flowing as I watched the casket being lowered from the aircraft. For a long time after, I would feel a tightness in my chest every time I talked about him. I remember that the newspapers described the public’s reaction as “an outpouring of grief”. That sums up how many of us felt.

Without him, undeniably, my future in politics seemed less bright. I had lost my protector. While I may never rise beyond being a Minister, so long as Tun Razak was the head of the Government, I could be sure that he would listen to my views. I did not know what Tun Hussein, the new Prime Minister, thought of me. Under him, could I still remain confident of being heard? That remained to be seen.

Tun Hussein was more aloof than Tun Razak and did not make friends easily. On my part, I always had trouble pushing myself forward and this may have added to my difficulties. The only consolation was that nobody else seemed close to him either. Tun Hussein took charge after Tun Razak’s death and immediately seemed to be under tremendous pressure. He was known to have a short fuse and people were usually careful not to tell him anything that might make him angry. On one occasion he lost his temper when his aide-de-camp could not be found. To be fair to Tun Hussein, his ADC was not very good at his job and had a habit of disappearing. His patience sorely tried, Tun Hussein shouted at the man when he finally turned up.

The lobbying and campaigning for the now vacant post of Deputy Prime Minister went on for several months. At one point, Tengku Razaleigh called Tun Ghafar and me for a meeting to discuss who should be appointed the next Deputy Prime Minister. He suggested that since we were the three Vice-Presidents of UMNO, the choice should be confined to us. Tengku Razaleigh’s family members had a history of dying relatively young, so he suggested that he should be given the chance to be Deputy Prime Minister. In the end, however, the three of us agreed to approach Tun Hussein and put forward the idea that he make his selection from among the three Vice-Presidents.

Frankly, I did not think I had much of a chance. I was the Vice-President who had won the position with the lowest number of votes, and was also still stuck with the image of being a Malay “ultra”. This made me popular with Malay voters, but caused some worry in the Chinese community. As Education Minister I had clashed with Chinese educationists, while the MCA still remembered how I had blamed them for the Alliance’s setback in the 1969 General Election. A man who was perceived as anti-Chinese was not likely to be welcomed as the heir apparent to the leader of this multiracial country, for in effect that is what the Deputy Prime Minister would be. The foreign Press was also vociferous in their criticism. They simply could not conceive of me as a leader of this nation. Their dislike of me never abated and I was to be their 
bête noir
 (or at least their 
sawo matang
 or brown-skinned bogeyman) throughout my political career.

The day Tun Hussein was supposed to announce his choice of Deputy Prime Minister, I went to see him to tell him that I was going to Kluang in Johor to visit a school. Perhaps I was hoping that he would indicate something, that he would ask me not to go as he would be announcing my appointment as Deputy Prime Minister. But he was stony-faced and said nothing. Disheartened, I left him and took the car to Kluang. I went to the school and was given the usual briefing, after which I inspected the facilities and talked to the teachers.

Sometime during the course of my inspection, my bodyguard came and whispered that I had been selected as Deputy Prime Minister. I was at a loss for words. The State Education Officer, the Headmaster and the senior teachers crowded around, congratulating me. The State Education Officer suggested that I cut short my visit and return to Kuala Lumpur, which I did. It was a long drive. At the border between the Federal Territory and Selangor I enjoyed the first privilege of my elevated status: the police outriders were waiting and they smoothly fell into place and escorted me as Deputy Prime Minister to my Ministry of Education office in Federal House.

I decided to go and see Tun Hussein to thank him, but I could not do so immediately as he had a prior appointment. When I finally managed to see him, it was at the Deputy Prime Minister’s office as he had not yet moved into the Prime Minister’s office. I thanked him profusely but he seemed quite cool. I cannot even remember him smiling when I shook his hand, but then he was not a demonstrative man. I learnt later that the Press conference during which he had announced his decision had not gone well. There had been a loud gasp, almost a groan when he named me Deputy Prime Minister, followed by a flurry of questions about why he had chosen me. The questions suggested that they did not think much of his choice and I think he was rattled by that. He closed the Press conference by saying that he hoped and prayed that he had made the right decision.

The reporters were not the only people disturbed by the news of my appointment. Hasmah’s colleague at the Public Health Institute told her about the announcement before I had a chance to tell her myself. She locked herself in an empty room and cried. She told me later that she was upset because she was worried about the amount of work and the burden of responsibility that had now fallen on my shoulders. After she had calmed down, she left the Institute and returned to our house in Petaling Jaya, where our neighbours started knocking on the door to pass on their best wishes and congratulations.

I cannot say my fellow party Vice-Presidents were happy about Tun Hussein’s decision either. Tun Ghafar, who had received the highest number of votes in the VP contest, was upset enough to resign from the Government. He went into business after that. I tried to soften the impact of his leaving and said he had planned on leaving anyway, but I do not think that went down very well with him. The truth was that Tun Hussein did not know Tun Ghafar very well and perhaps did not consider him well qualified. As for Tengku Razaleigh, Tun Hussein remembered very well how, as Finance Minister, the prince had bypassed him to deal directly with the Prime Minister. I believe I was chosen by default, as Tun Hussein’s “least worst option”, and not because of any particular virtue that I may have had.

There were many lessons to be learnt. I thought that as Deputy Prime Minister I would be high enough in the hierarchy to be free of any direct opposition. That was, of course, very naïve. The party’s Youth Chief Tan Sri Syed Jaafar Hassan Albar, who was a very senior member of UMNO, was so dead against my appointment that he travelled the country to campaign against me. I think he believed I did not deserve the position because of the way I had opposed the Tunku in 1969, and because I was still a relatively junior member of the party. But he found out that his own youth members did not feel the same way. Feeling secure about the level of support I had in UMNO, I decided not to respond to his campaigning. Nor did I hold this against him or his son, Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, who was appointed by me to my Cabinet for many years and was Foreign Minister when I retired.

I did not enter the office of the Deputy Prime Minister with a comprehensive set of ideas about what I wanted to do, and this was just as well. I was soon to discover that it would not be the experience I had expected.

ENDNOTE

[
1
] The Muda irrigation scheme is located in Kedah and came into operation in January 1970.
 

My children were completely unfazed by my promotion. We had to move from our house in Petaling Jaya into the official residence, which was quite small for our relatively large family. Tun Hussein had been living there and had extended it slightly, but there was still not enough room for all of us. The old colonial house had been built for British officers, who of course did not have their children with them. Since there were only two big rooms upstairs, I had to partition the space carefully so the children would be comfortable. I ended up converting the bathroom, which was sizeable, into Marina’s bedroom. The three boys had to sleep in one room and I created a dining area by constructing a platform above the staircase. Meanwhile, my daughter Melinda slept in a converted storeroom.

The children did not seem to mind the lack of space, since they were largely away and only came back to stay with us during the holidays. There was no change in their attitudes either—they had the same friends and went on with their usual activities. There was no added security for them and when they travelled, they never told people who they were. When Mokhzani later went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the US to study, he befriended a young Colombian boy who was his roommate. By then, I was already Prime Minister. One day, in preparation for my visit, the US Secret Service came and examined the room. The boy was startled beyond words and wondered what on earth was happening. Mokhzani finally had to tell him that his father was the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

By becoming Deputy Prime Minister, I had already gone further than I had ever expected when I first became a politician. Still, I could not completely give up the life of an ordinary citizen. I liked and still like to drive and do my own shopping. I disliked protocol intensely and often had to instruct my bodyguard not to push people aside or ask them to get out of my way when I was out in public. Sometimes I deliberately ignored the path cleared for me and instead would walk in another direction. Once, during a visit to the Smithsonian Museum in the US, the hefty six-footers in my security detail insisted on surrounding me completely so that as I walked around, all I could see were their huge backs.

I understood why security was necessary—should anything happen to me, the security officers would have been blamed. But the only time my personal security was actually breached was on 28 July 2006, when, as a result of local political rivalries, I was blasted in the face with pepper spray during a visit to Kelantan. Despite that incident, my feelings about security and protocol have not changed and I am happiest when I can walk about and speak to people without any hindrance.

My appointment as Deputy Prime Minister also entailed moving from the Education Ministry to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). It was suggested that heading the Education Ministry was not consistent with my new status as Deputy Prime Minister. For my part, I believe some who were wary of my continuing rise in UMNO feared the consequences of my retaining my old portfolio. The position of Minister of Education was powerful in the party because many Malay teachers were UMNO members and, in those earlier times especially, they exerted a strong influence in the party, especially during the elections.

I realised this only later, but at that time I had no reason to suspect anything and thought people were only trying to be helpful. I also felt that, as the new Deputy Prime Minister, my eventual candidature for Prime Minister was now becoming more certain. Switching Cabinet portfolios therefore seemed unlikely to affect my fortunes greatly. In any case, staying on at the Education Ministry would not have helped me because I had not made any effort to establish closer contact with the teachers.

I found MITI to be very invigorating as I had always been interested in business, particularly in encouraging the climate and environment for its growth. Besides, I had often wondered why some people and some races seemed to succeed in business while others just could not manage it.