A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (64 page)

I had known Anwar’s father, Datuk Ibrahim Abdul Rahman, a staunch UMNO member and Member of Parliament when I myself was also a Member of Parliament between 1964 and 1969. I thought that, at heart,

Anwar was an UMNO man. He had even been my supporter when I was at odds with the Tunku in 1969-1970.

Anwar also had qualities that could contribute towards UMNO’s standing among intellectuals. He was well-read and could quote many philosophers and thinkers, from Sun Tzu to Malik Bennabi. His command of the Malay language was excellent and he was fond of using literary language in his speeches. Though most of his terminology had people reaching for their dictionaries, his style of speaking impressed them no end. He was also able to mingle with academics within and outside the country. I genuinely thought he would be an asset to the party, so I was inclined to back him.

Some UMNO members, however, were worried and felt threatened by Anwar. During Tun Razak’s premiership, these people had worked hard to counter Anwar’s anti-establishment activities. Led by Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, this group included Datuk Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin, my former political secretary who later became a Minister.
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 I do not think Aziz ever reconciled himself to Anwar’s UMNO membership and both he and Tun Abdullah thought that much of what Anwar said was just posturing. Anwar’s future father-in-law, Datuk Dr Wan Ismail Wan Mahmud, was also among those who were strongly against him. At that time, Wan Ismail worked with a psychological warfare unit and was a strong supporter of the Government. When I heard that he objected to Anwar marrying his daughter Wan Azizah, I had a talk with him and persuaded him to relent. This was before Anwar joined UMNO.
 

The first disquieting sign came when I formed the Cabinet in 1982 and appointed Anwar as a Deputy Minister. He came to see me, expressing disappointment that he had not been made full Minister. I was startled. “There are so many who are senior to you. How can I appoint you?” I asked. I also told him that no one had ever jumped from being a critic of the Government to becoming a full member of the Cabinet in such a short time. Besides, he had only just joined UMNO—senior members would have been deeply offended if his elevation to a ministerial rank were to take place so soon. I had already given him a very high position by appointing him a Deputy Minister and to complain over the appointment was unprecedented, and, I felt, unbecoming. At that time I did not realise the extent of his ambition. Perhaps I should have learnt then how deep it went and his strong resentment when his plans were frustrated.

Another display of Anwar’s ambition came at the party election in 1982, when he decided to contest for the top post in UMNO Youth. The head then, Datuk Suhaimi Kamaruddin, liked to hang on to the leadership position of any organisation he headed. When he led Gerakan Belia 4B Malaysia (4B Youth Movement Malaysia),
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 for example, he kept changing the rules so that he could continue to lead.
 

I backed Anwar’s bid but Suhaimi rejected the idea of stepping aside for him. I had a rather ugly contretemps with him, but he still insisted on contesting against Anwar. Suhaimi lost his position and became very bitter. In 1987, he backed Tengku Razaleigh’s challenge against my leadership, which I will deal with in a later chapter.

From then on, Anwar made clear that his ambition knew no limits. He clearly wanted to rise in the UMNO hierarchy as quickly as possible, as that alone appeared to be his objective when he joined UMNO. I quickly realised this but made no attempt to curb him, as I knew that he had the qualities to make a good leader. It seemed prudent to have someone in line, ready to take over from me.

However, becoming the head of UMNO Youth did not satisfy him for long. Soon after, he wanted to become an elected Vice-President of the party. As head of the Youth wing, he was already 
ex officio
 a Vice-President. The heads of UMNO’s main sections, excluding the recently-formed Puteri UMNO,
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 enjoy that rank automatically. Through Tan Sri Megat Junid Megat Ayub, then a Deputy Minister under me, I learnt that Anwar wanted to hold the post in
his own right. I told Megat that Anwar should be content with his current position and allow others the opportunity to move up. But in the end, because he was very insistent, I allowed him to contest for the post.
 

Why did I support him? Why did I not stop him from contesting? Actually I did not support him. But I did not stand in his way either. Was there any way to say no? Some people perhaps saw my allowing him to contest as a sign of my approval. It was less than that. It was not an endorsement—there were simply no grounds for me to stop him. But I did tell Megat that I thought Anwar’s move was not proper and that his impatience was not in good taste. However, it did not go against the rules.

There are three elected vice-presidential positions in UMNO. They are very senior positions immediately after the President and Deputy President, who by convention would become Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively. Because the Vice-President is just one step from becoming Deputy Prime Minister, there would usually be a fierce contest for this post. It is the level at which people try to prove their mettle and establish themselves as potential contenders for the second and then top position in the party. I personally know how bruising these contests can be, especially if none of the incumbents is prepared to stand down and so create a vacancy. I myself contested one of those three positions against all three incumbents in 1971/1972 and lost.

I never spoke to Anwar about his own wish to enter this contest. That I did not stop or discourage Anwar had nothing to do with my attitude towards him specifically. That was simply my way and personal inclination in general and I seldom tried, as UMNO President, to influence party elections. If I did involve myself it was with a general, not a personal, objective. In contests for specific party positions I chose to be hands-off. I did not like to back a loser and then have to work with the winner.

But I was aware that while I myself did not place much store on such things, many UMNO members saw my neutral stand as an endorsement as they put a high premium on traditional Malay etiquette and precedents. Still, Anwar’s impatience to rise must have appeared unseemly to them. Partly because of his religious credentials, Anwar was quickly able to build a power base within the party and when he became Education Minister, he ingratiated himself with the Malay teachers and their union. They became his loyal supporters. Before Malays became more dominant in the business sector in the 1990s, it was teachers who had considerable influence in UMNO and were considered to be a major power bloc in the party. They also had close contact with Malays on the ground, with the voters in the villages and in the Malay urban areas. They were in touch with popular Malay sentiments and aspirations.

When Anwar wanted to win people over, he could be very polished and charming. He could win over the strongly religious Arabs while being friendly with die-hard, anti-Arab Jews. He was not seen as a Muslim extremist. Even after his 1999 convictions for corruption and sodomy, many Muslims continued to believe in Anwar and his version of what happened to him. In this sense, Anwar is quite a remarkable man. He is amazingly persuasive and knows how to convince people of his sincerity.

To most Muslims, he appeared very pious and even before he joined UMNO, he had built up a considerable international Muslim following. One member of the staff at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, I recall, thought rather poorly of me, but changed his attitude towards my stewardship after Anwar joined the Government. Anwar cultivated people and knew how to win their support. He had travelled a lot when he was a youth leader, meeting Afghans, Pakistanis and many well-known Muslim and non-Muslim youth leaders. He made it a point to meet and talk with them. He appeared to be all things to all people. Anwar also
befriended people like Paul Wolfowitz, then the neoconservative US Deputy Secretary of Defence and a strong supporter of Israeli aggression against Palestinians and Iraq.
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 Anwar also courted the international media, presenting himself as a liberal who was against many of the practices of the Malaysian Government, of which he was himself a member. He dangled the promise that things would change once he took over.
 

People would come to tell me that he was trying to gain personal popularity, especially with the UMNO rank and file. He visited the party divisions and branches often but to a certain extent, I thought this was a natural thing to do. All politicians seek to ingratiate themselves with people to gain popularity. When he became Deputy Prime Minister and UMNO

Deputy President, I thought his contacts with the UMNO division leaders were useful. One day, he would take over the leadership. When he did, he would need these party connections to help him lead UMNO and the nation effectively.

For many years, we had a good personal relationship. He took up horse-riding because I did, although he proved to be an impatient rider. Before he learned to ride properly, he started galloping. He fell and nearly broke his neck and had to be hospitalised. Later he was to claim the police had injured his neck.

Before he became Deputy Prime Minister, I would take him with me on my official trips abroad. On the plane we would talk and discuss politics and religion, topics which were of interest to both of us. He was very knowledgeable and appeared to be religiously committed, performing his ablutions and praying even while flying. He struck me as a very impressive and pious man. He was one of my strongest supporters and always said the right things. There is no doubt that there was a special aura—a charisma—about him and I was perhaps affected by that.

One of our UMNO customs is that on the evening of Hari Raya, the Eid ul-Fitr festival, after all the visitors have left the Prime Minister’s residence, he visits the Deputy Prime Minister. Such visits among Muslims are intended to remove misunderstandings and to renew goodwill and amity for the coming year. This is the practice of Muslims everywhere and is especially valued by Malay and Malaysian Muslims. Given the complexity of the relations between Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister (as my own experience with Tun Hussein showed), it is particularly important that trust be reaffirmed between our party’s and nation’s two topmost leaders. Yet between Anwar and myself there was no special need to build goodwill or heal wounds. Anwar’s family was very close to mine. His wife, Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, would prepare the northern dishes that I liked, and she and Hasmah got on very well together. I liked Azizah, who had a charm of her own. Even after we parted ways I cannot think of her as a political opponent or as someone I had quarrelled with. I understand her decision to stand by her husband.

Anwar was also very hospitable. During the fasting month he would set aside many evenings to break fast with lots of people at his house. I noted that he always invited the 
Menteri Besar
 from all the states on these occasions. I never did that, thinking it would be a great inconvenience for these outstation people to come all that way just for a short dinner. The Government would have to pay their travel expenses, but Anwar must have felt that it was good public relations and politically profitable.

After gaining the party’s vice-presidency, Anwar was still restless. His next quest was for the position of Deputy President. The Deputy President, he knew, also becomes Deputy Prime Minister. In the past, however, the incumbent had seldom been challenged. That happens only in extraordinary times, such as 1987 when I and Tun Ghafar Baba, as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, were both challenged by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Tun Musa Hitam. By challenging the then Deputy, Tun Ghafar, Anwar was not only violating party tradition but also revealing his impatience to get to the top. When he came to see me about his intentions, I pointed out that it was inappropriate to challenge Tun Ghafar, my nominee for the post of Deputy Prime Minister. I asked him not to stand. For a while, he seemed to heed my words and he did not campaign. But when I criticised some UMNO leaders in Terengganu for staying on too long and not giving a chance to young aspirants, he interpreted my advice there to mean that I wanted older leaders like Tun Ghafar to step down. He assumed the challenge would be in accord with my views, and so without asking for my permission, he began his campaign.

How he managed it I do not know, but more than two-thirds of the divisions nominated him for Deputy President. Even divisions known to be Tun Ghafar’s strong supporters failed to nominate him and it became obvious that Tun Ghafar would lose. Seeing the situation as hopeless, he chose not to contest and Anwar won uncontested.

I did not want to remove Tun Ghafar but what would have been my excuse if I did not appoint the new Deputy President of UMNO to the Deputy Prime Minister’s post? I have always considered and followed the wishes of UMNO. For example, in 1993 when the party elected Tun Abdullah, the former Prime Minister, as a Vice President of UMNO, I brought him back into the Cabinet even though he had supported Tengku Razaleigh against me in the 1987 UMNO elections.

Later I was informed that Anwar was very active in cultivating support for himself among UMNO divisions and urging them to criticise me. Even then, I told myself, as he was going to be the next Prime Minister, it did not matter. I wanted to maintain a good working relationship with him, so I was prepared to overlook his impatience regarding my retirement. It is hard to fault a politician for being ambitious, tireless, and forward-looking. Perhaps Malay society now needed such leaders and more of them. We had come a long way from the Tunku’s easy affability that had so troubled me in the late 1960s. Perhaps that was a good thing, and Anwar’s aggressive approach exemplified the new Malay politics.

As I said when Anwar joined UMNO, many senior members of the party did not like him because he posed a threat to their own ambitions. Anwar and Tun Abdullah did not get on well because when Tun Abdullah was a civil servant, he had been tasked by Tun Razak with countering Anwar’s leadership of Muslim students and youth. With Anwar’s rapid rise in UMNO, he became a threat to Tun Abdullah’s leadership of the Penang state UMNO. Tun Abdullah’s fears became reality when Anwar became Deputy President and replaced Tun Ghafar as Deputy Prime Minister. Anwar quickly displaced Tun Abdullah as the Penang liaison head of UMNO and Barisan Nasional.