A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (56 page)

The British did not want the Peninsular Malay states, which were not really British colonies, to compete with Singapore. Commercially the island had already grown into the largest entrepôt port for the whole of the Malay Archipelago. Consequently the British decided that Port Swettenham was to be just a feeder port for Singapore. To ensure this, the British charged higher railway freight rates to Port Swettenham than to Singapore, even though Singapore was further away. This guaranteed that Port Swettenham would always be unable to compete with Singapore.

After Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, it built up its port until it became one of the 10 major ports in the world. At times it even ranked first. Singapore had obviously gained much from its port operations and it became the hub for moving goods throughout the region, using Malaysia and Indonesia as its hinterlands.

Before I became Prime Minister, the Government decided to develop Port Klang, the former Port Swettenham, into a major port for ocean-going ships. New wharves were built north of the original jetties which served the old port (these jetties are now referred to as the South Port). We also added more wharves west of the old port, increasing the capacity of Port Klang considerably.

As was my habit, I would drive to the West Port
[1]
 area when it was under construction. I have always been fascinated by the metamorphosis of bare land into housing estates, industrial estates, highways, bridges and other structures. The building of West Port changed swampland into a modern deep-water port and after its completion I would drive there to see the ships which the port was to serve. For months on end, I saw only a few ships using the port. It seemed that all that work had wastefully produced a barely-used facility. In the early 1990s the Cabinet asked the Minister of Transport to get information on the number of ships and containers handled by the Malaysian ports. For standardisation and statistical purposes, containers were measured in twenty-foot equivalent units. (TEUs). I was shocked that by the end of the 1980s, all the ports of Malaysia put together handled only 1 million TEUs. Singapore, with two harbours, was at that time handling 12 million TEUs. I wanted to know the reasons for this great disparity. It seemed that Malaysian ports still served only as feeder ports for Singapore, and that the majority of the containers originating in Malaysia did not even use Malaysian ports. They were going to Singapore by road or rail to avoid double-handling, that is, loading up on ships at Port Klang and unloading in Singapore for reloading on ocean-going ships there.
 

Big ocean-going container ships did not come to Port Klang because it was said to be uneconomical. Malaysian containers would be waiting at the Singapore port for them, and they would unload Malaysian containers at Singapore for overland or sea transport to Malaysian destinations.

It did not make sense. Port Klang was a deep-water port and could handle the biggest container ships, which at that time carried a maximum of 5,000 containers. All the money spent to make it a deep-water port was wasted because only small coastal container ships of shallow draft would use it. The Cabinet instructed the Minister in charge not just to find out why, but to personally promote Port Klang to the big shipping companies. After ensuring that the port administration was efficient, he went to the headquarters of major shipping companies in several countries and persuaded them to use Port Klang, pointing out the advantages in terms of cost and so on.

Slowly at first but then more quickly, Port Klang began to be used by the big shipping companies and their ocean-going container ships. Today Port Klang’s North Port and West Port together handle more than eight million TEUs. The new port of Tanjung Pelepas in Johor also handles more then five million TEUs. Together with other Malaysian ports, total TEUs being handled is now more than 10 million. The lesson learnt by the Cabinet was that when Ministers got personally involved in the work of their Ministries, impressive results could be obtained because they had stature and clout.

Despite this, there was still much that needed to be fixed. We still received reports of schools and hospitals remaining uncompleted years after work had been started. There were still problems in the bureaucracy, many structural bottlenecks and procedural obstacles to clear. Frequently, businessmen and other members of the public would complain about the officers in the Government. Their complaints alerted me to the continuing and intractable nature of certain problems of governance, of ensuring systematic rather than episodic administration.

It may have seemed like a straightforward problem. All a Minister had to do was issue a directive and show that action was being taken. In truth, however, it was a very delicate matter. People expected the Ministers, whom they had helped to put in their positions, to intercede on their behalf. They wanted to see results, perhaps even a little drama. Certainly, the Ministers could not ignore their complaints, but on the other hand, punitive measures doled out publicly on civil servants would have had adverse effects. The elected Government requires the cooperation of the permanent service. Antagonising them could well result in them withdrawing their cooperation in subtle ways, and their capacity to do damage to the Government is considerable. Still, the 
rakyat
 had to be heard and their cries for assistance attended to.

I found that the best approach was to talk to officers privately. The 
rakyat
 may not have been happy with this but no one likes a public scolding. Humiliation aside, it would not produce the required results. It was a lesson that I myself learnt because before I joined the Government I was openly critical of Government officers. After I became Prime Minister I recognised that there were many angles to consider and I was very careful in the way I dealt with the service.

One way to be proactive about identifying problems was to note them in writing. I always carried a small notebook to jot down things I observed and wanted to raise in the Cabinet, or directly with the Ministers concerned. I encouraged the Ministers to do this also, as memory can be flawed. At Cabinet meetings, the first one to two hours would be devoted to the points jotted down in our notebooks. Issues were resolved and many of the innovations made in Malaysia were the results of these notes made whenever I travelled abroad or at home, or anytime an idea came to my mind.

From the start I decided to oversee the whole Government and its work, and not just restrict myself to matters in the Prime Minister’s Department. Likewise, I expected Ministers to be directly in charge of their respective portfolios as well as take an interest in Government as a whole. Public criticism of other Ministries was sternly discouraged, but during Cabinet meetings each Minister was free to point out problems in other Ministries. We believed in collective responsibility and so it was the duty of Ministers to point out any shortcomings. Quite often a Minister may not notice anything wrong in his own Ministry that is glaringly obvious to others. When I was Minister of Education I scrutinised all the papers of other Ministries and I did not hesitate to comment on them and to participate in the discussions of every Ministry during Cabinet meetings. Unfortunately, one or two of my Ministers were resentful of comments or criticisms directed at their Ministries because they believed they were always right.

In my time, Ministers were occasionally unable to attend Cabinet meetings and would send their deputies instead. But this did not seem right to me. Much to the disappointment of the Deputy Ministers, it was decided in 1983 that an absent Minister should delegate his responsibilities to another Minister. These acting Ministers, however, should not make drastic changes or decisions and should only ensure that the Ministry was carrying out its usual work. If problems arose, they should be put aside until the return of the Minister. If they were urgent, they should be reported to the Cabinet immediately. Only rarely, I found, could decisions not wait for the responsible Minister to come back. Along with the rest of the improvements made to render the Malaysian administration more efficient, the hands-on involvement of the Ministers helped to speed up Malaysia’s development progress and economic growth.

The most powerful figure in the Malaysian system of administration is the Prime Minister. This is not ego, it is fact. From this fact stems many implications—if the Prime Minister is observant and willing to listen to the complaints and suggestions brought to him, and then to make firm decisions, then Malaysia will grow and prosper rapidly. Because of the structure of government, much depends on this one person, in Malaysia at least.

When I led the party in elections I openly campaigned not just for victory, but for a two-thirds majority. I told the electorate that only a strong Government could deliver on the promises made. Although the Barisan Nasional which I headed lost three of the 13 states at different times, that is, Kelantan in 1990, Terengganu in 1999 and Sabah in 1984, I never failed to get a two-thirds majority in the Federal Government.

The reverse side of the same coin is that once a Prime Minister heads a powerful Government, a culture of feudalism—marked by deference and flattery, patronage and access-brokering, client politics and favour-seeking—tends to take over. The party seldom ever criticises him. Even when the leader makes mistakes and his judgment seems faulty, there is little criticism other than that made by the Opposition. In the party, everyone usually rushes to show support and to express sycophantic loyalty to the leader. Advertisements and signboards show how close the leaders are with the Prime Minister, and the mainstream media refrain, voluntarily or otherwise, from criticism and instead find reasons for publishing fawning praise.

Recognising this, one of the things I did during my tenure was to forbid the use of my name for buildings, roads, schools and so forth. As far as possible, I tried to prevent the personality cult that so easily develops around strong leaders. I did not allow my picture to be put up in offices—although I know it was anyway—and I told Ministries inviting me to functions that they should not give me gifts.

I did not even want to have my name used in conversation, but that was impossible to avoid because by and large, people enjoy name-dropping. At one time, I even tried to put a stop to the congratulatory, thank-you advertisements that regularly appeared in newspapers if I opened or launched anything. But then the newspapers complained because they lost a great deal of advertising revenue.

In the final analysis, Malaysia’s civil service and administrative machinery is, I believe, better than that of most developing countries. One of the most important indicators is efficiency in tax collection. In many countries taxes are not collected properly. In some cases, the taxpayer negotiates with the tax collector as to how much he should pay. Apart from resulting in the full amount not being collected, the negotiations inevitably lead to corruption. It would be naïve to think that all Malaysians pay the full amount of tax due, but the amount of tax collected is quite considerable. However, sometimes officers do make life very difficult for companies. They have been known to remove books for closer examination and keep them for weeks, even months. Naturally, business cannot go on as usual.

During my 22 years in office, I often received complaints about tax collection but what many Malaysians may not know is that the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) is strictly independent. I could only make general criticisms, but I could never mention any company specifically because that would be interfering with the operations of the Board.

Yet the IRB loves publicity. People they raid may not actually have done anything wrong, but the Board appears and carries off truck-loads of documents, all in the presence of the media. The targeted company, however, loses crucial business credibility.

Just before I became a Minister in 1974, the Inland Revenue Board raided both my clinic and my house. They took away the stubs of old chequebooks and concluded that I earned more than I had declared. I tried to explain that some of the money deposited into my accounts was cash from party headquarters for elections. I had to deposit it in my accounts before I could distribute it to party workers, but none of this made any impression on the income tax officers.

There were also crossed cheques from people who did not have bank accounts and who needed my help to cash the cheques. I deposited these cheques in my accounts and issued cash cheques to various people. When I was raided, all the crossed cheques were regarded by the tax officers as earnings, and I had to pay tax on them. Again all explanations fell on deaf ears and I ended up having to pay RM130,000, a princely sum for me then. The department officers hinted that if I disputed their assessment I might have to pay three times the amount due if the courts found me in the wrong. And there was no telling what the courts would decide. In the end I had to pay about one and a half times the amount due in instalments which was only completed long after I became Deputy Prime Minister. I also learnt that if I forgo payments due to me for whatever reason, I still have to pay tax on the money I do not receive. Because of this experience, my natural sympathy lies with people who complain about the IRB. But the Board generally did a good, conscientious job.

Thanks to them and to the Customs Department, the Malaysian Government has always had enough money to pay the salaries and the cost of development projects without much borrowing. We were also always able to tide over financial crises that came our way because we were financially strong. Most other countries would not have been able to do what we did.

ENDNOTE

[
1
] Opened in 1995, West Port is the biggest private seaport in the country.
 

We launched the 
Bersih, Cekap & Amanah
 (Clean, Efficient & Trustworthy) campaign in 1982 for use in the first General Election after I became Prime Minister. I wanted to hold the election early to legitimise my position as leader, and we needed a good slogan to point to the changes which we thought should take place during my leadership. We decided that change was needed in three areas: cleaning up corruption, and promoting efficiency and trustworthiness.