A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (50 page)

Tun Hussein had had quite a colourful and varied career. He had been in the Johor Military Forces before the Pacific War and, together with Tun Ibrahim Ismail, who later became the third Malay Chief of the Armed Forces of Malaysia, was sent to Dehradun in India to train as a military officer. He joined the British Army during the war and served in Egypt before being selected to join the British forces set up to invade occupied Malaya and fight the Japanese. Tun Hussein landed in Morib as part of the assault force, but the Japanese surrendered before the British could attack. After he left the army, he joined Johor’s administrative service. When his father, Dato’ Onn Jaafar, became the head of newly-formed UMNO, Tun Hussein became the leader of the youth wing.

As Prime Minister Tun Hussein was a very principled man and there was never even a whiff of corruption or scandal around him. He was a straightforward leader, but many UMNO members could not quite forget that he had left the party for 17 years to join his father’s Independence of Malaya Party.

Many people joked about his habit of underlining words and sentences in the papers he studied. He would go over the documents again and again and in the end he would have underlined every sentence in every paragraph in different colours. He worked very hard and always took his files home in the red box-like containers provided by the Finance Ministry. There could be as many as 12 such boxes and they were all carried home in the evening, then back to the office in the morning. Cabinet meetings under him were serious, drawn-out affairs that sometimes went beyond lunch and continued into the afternoon. He was meticulous and his style, painstaking. He attended to details carefully and dealt with issues in depth.

He had a frail constitution so he had to take as many as five days’ rest upon his return from official travels abroad. Between this and his thoroughness when dealing with his paper work, he had little time to visit the rural areas and meet UMNO divisions and branches. He missed out on opportunities to build popular support this way but there was always a great deal of respect for him among the UMNO rank and file and the people in general.

Two years after he became Prime Minister, Tun Hussein pulled off a political coup that dealt a blow to PAS. In the aftermath of the May 13 riots in 1969, PAS had joined the Barisan Nasional and had co-operated quite closely with UMNO and the other parties in the coalition, including during the 1974 General Election. But it was not long before many UMNO members began to doubt PAS’ sincerity and suspect that it was using its position in Government to strengthen the party.

Then PAS President Datuk Asri Muda, who was Minister of Rural Development, started turning FELDA settlers from being UMNO supporters into members of PAS. When he visited FELDA schemes he would arrange popular theatrical plays that outwardly featured religious themes, but which actually promoted PAS and its ideas. In his own remarks to the settlers, he obliquely suggested that UMNO was not as religious as PAS. These people were very easily swayed by arguments apparently based on religion, especially when Arabic words were used.

After the 1974 elections, there was disagreement over who should be the next 
Menteri Besar
, or Chief Minister of Kelantan. Since the former 
Menteri Besar
, Asri, had now joined the Federal Cabinet, he was ineligible. The Barisan Nasional proposed PAS moderate Datuk Mohamad Nasir to replace him, a choice that did not please PAS. He had long been Asri’s deputy as Chief Minister and, with PAS too, relations between the top man and his number two had often been awkward. Some PAS members saw Nasir as too open and too close to UMNO. A friendly person, he related easily with UMNO leaders and PAS did not trust him because of that. He was also a very upright man who frowned upon any deliberate misinterpretations of Islamic teachings to favour PAS.

Nasir’s investigations into the former state administration under Asri led to civil unrest in Kelantan and prompted PAS to call for his resignation as 
Menteri Besar
. Nasir’s investigations were driven not by any political agenda, but by his character. He was thinking not about PAS and its partisan interests, but about what was right. He could not tolerate corruption. I myself attempted to work out a compromise and tried to get them to set aside their personal differences to give priority to the interests of the party, theirs as well as the Barisan Nasional. Both sides should have known that in cases of serious impropriety, legal action would have to be taken. As the situation deteriorated, Tun Hussein eventually declared a state of emergency and imposed federal rule on Kelantan.

On 8 November 1977 the Bill to place Kelantan under federal rule was tabled in Parliament. PAS opposed this Kelantan Emergency Act and instructed its members to vote against it. As in most parliamentary systems, the Barisan Nasional used the party whip system to maintain discipline, especially on major issues. PAS’s defiance of the whip, therefore, amounted to repudiating the Barisan Nasional coalition. This indiscipline merited serious action and PAS was expelled from the coalition.

After three months of federal rule under a civil servant, Tan Sri Hashim Aman, state elections were called in Kelantan in February 1978. PAS contested all 36 state seats but won only two. Barisan Nasional won 23 seats and Berjasa, the party Nasir founded after quitting PAS, took 11 seats.

The split in PAS gave UMNO the opportunity to regain a state that PAS had controlled since 1959. Its defeat was so severe that it was thought that PAS was finished as a political party. For Tun Hussein as Prime Minister and President of the Barisan Nasional, this was a major achievement—he had returned a state to UMNO rule and rid the ruling coalition of incompatible elements.

Tun Hussein and I had our disagreements, but one which escalated into some harshness and raised voices took place just days after he appointed me as his deputy. It was over the corruption case against the UMNO Youth chief, Datuk Harun Idris. I had always regarded Harun as a Malay nationalist, and for this reason I respected him. I thought the case against him was not justified and should have been withdrawn.

The underlying issue had to do with the financing of a world heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Bugner. Harun was keen to bring this event to Kuala Lumpur but Tun Razak had advised him not to proceed. People whose opinions Tun Razak valued were complaining that the fight was not properly managed. But Harun went ahead anyway, and afterwards it was claimed the money collected was not fully accounted for. Harun denied that anything improper had happened.

There may have been more at stake here than simply a dispute over the financial accounts of a sporting event. Harun was directly involved with the organisation that staged the event and he sought to raise his own profile by his personal association with it. Harun, I thought, was showing his hand and signalling, much too early, his ambitions to become Prime Minister. That prospect would not have pleased Tun Razak. Had Harun contested against Tun Hussein, Harun would likely have won because he was a grassroots man and very popular. I too supported him because it was he who went all out to bring me back into UMNO.

A way out was offered to Harun: that he would be made Malaysia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, which would have removed him from the local political scene for a while. But he refused, so the prosecution’s case against him went ahead. He gambled and lost, and ended up paying a high price for refusing to be sidetracked from politics and his obvious ambition to become Prime Minister.

I had in fact expected Tun Razak to choose Harun as Deputy Prime Minister, but he had chosen Tun Hussein instead. When Tun Hussein had been the Minister of Education, Harun had led an UMNO Youth delegation to see him. It is said that Harun’s manner during the meeting was appallingly rude. He emphasised his arguments by pointing his index finger at Tun Hussein, a gesture that, for Malays, is completely unacceptable. Tun Hussein never forgave him for that episode.

By the time Tun Hussein had taken over as Prime Minister, Harun had been indicted but not yet jailed. I thought Tun Hussein would act strategically and garner political goodwill by not proceeding with the legal action against Harun. Thinking that he would at least be open to the idea, I met with him and suggested dropping the case. Strictly speaking, it should have been the Attorney-General’s decision, but the truth was the entire case was political. And in those days, the Prime Minister had a say in everything.

I was totally unprepared for his reaction. He flew into a rage and shouted, “This man is a criminal. I intend to jail him whether people like it or not”. He then went to a huge safe in his office, took out a thick stack of files and threw them on the table in front of me. “You can look at these files if you want. It’s all in there. He is a criminal and he deserves to be jailed.” The intensity of his anger was terrible to behold.

I was dumbstruck. I had imagined that, as Deputy Prime Minister, my opinions would now be listened to and considered, whatever the case. But apparently Tun Hussein thought differently. Once he began shouting I could say nothing, so I simply nodded.

What most affected our relationship, however, was his cautious decision-making style. Though being the Deputy Prime Minister meant having a lot of clout, in the end you could only do the things you wanted if the Prime Minister agreed with you. In my case, I was discouraged because I often did not get that support. One of my biggest frustrations involved our staking a claim to an island in the South China Sea. Unlike other islands, which are little more than underwater reefs, Amboyna Cay has trees and enough land for a runway. It is also geographically situated closer to Malaysia than to Vietnam. Several other countries, including China and the Philippines, wanted to claim this member of the Spratly Group of islands.

At first, Tun Hussein agreed with my plans to claim Amboyna Cay for Malaysia, but the following week he changed his mind, believing that our claim might provoke a confrontation with the other countries. I believe one or two other Cabinet members agreed with me but they did not say so openly. To this day, I am certain that Amboyna Cay could have been ours if Tun Hussein had not revised his decision.

The issue may seem a small one but it was most important, especially in the light of subsequent debates about the finite and diminishing nature of the world’s available natural resources. We don’t know what resources may lie beneath Amboyna Cay and its vicinity, especially now that we have developed the technology to drill deeper into the seabed. Some people have since claimed there is oil there. In any case, the island is closer to Malaysia than to any other country. It is only 130km from Sabah and Sarawak. By claiming it as part of our territory, we also lay a claim to a large part of the sea around it.

By right all those adjacent islands and the many atolls should belong to us because they lie within our continental shelf. We put up marker monuments on all these islands to denote that they are part of Malaysia. In the end, Amboyna Cay was occupied by Vietnam. They put their troops there and we chose not to contest their claim. The problem with these claims is that you have to maintain a continuing physical presence to enforce the claim and make it credible.

After we lost Amboyna Cay, we identified Layang-Layang, also known as Swallow Reef, and it was agreed that we put men there. One week the Cabinet agreed, and the next week Tun Hussein again decided that we should not make this claim, for fear of war with Vietnam. That same year, when I became Prime Minister, the first thing I did was to put people on Layang-Layang and to begin developing it as a small base and a tourist resort.

Another point of contention between me and Tun Hussein was the construction of the North-South Expressway, which I proposed to the Cabinet. At that time it would have only cost us RM6 billion to construct the 800km expressway, which was relatively cheap. For that amount of money we would have been able to build a four-lane dual-carriage expressway from Johor Baru to Bukit Kayu Hitam on the Thai border. That made good sense to me, even though there were not so many cars on the road at that time.

I had seen what highways had done for Japan and the US. I also remembered how in Standard
Two, my teacher told the class that when the railway line was constructed between Penang and Padang Besar, new townships and villages had sprung up all along the line. It seemed clear to me that a North-South Expressway would encourage the same kind of development. The same pattern had been seen in the Malay Archipelago in the past. When a port was built where the products of the hinterland could be gathered, ships would come from all parts of Asia to buy those products, to sell and exchange other goods, and so create an entrepot port. That was how Malacca became great, as did Sri Vijaya
[1]
 and Majapahit
[2]
 before it.
 

But Tun Hussein scrapped the highway idea. I managed to revive it only when I became Prime Minister, and today all along the North-South Expressway you can see development on a huge scale, unfolding on both sides. There are factories, housing estates and business parks. The highway has contributed much to the growth of Malaysia’s economy. By the time we were able to start building it, however, the cost of construction had gone up considerably. We decided to privatise it but we had to subsidise the project to bring down the capital cost. Otherwise, toll rates would have been prohibitive.

On another occasion, I suggested setting up a Federal Territories Ministry. Kuala Lumpur was our only Federal Territory at the time and I believed the city needed attention. I already had the habit of driving around the city to look at things like landscaping, lighting and the condition of the road dividers. I hoped very much I would be chosen as Federal Territories Minister so that I could implement my ideas for KL. Tun Hussein did create the Ministry, but appointed himself Minister. Sadly, he did not have enough time to focus on this portfolio and I think if I had been in charge, changes would have taken place much earlier. Still, it is very pleasing to see that KL is a very different city today. Road dividers now have flowers and plants and there are well-kept gardens under the monorail, which I had insisted upon.