|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ASIAN DILEMMA
Mahathir on globalization and the post-Crisis order
By Roger MittonSIX YEARS AGO, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was asked what he would say to Slobodan Milosevic if he met the Yugoslav leader. He replied: "I would bash him in the face." The incident illuminates the Malaysian leader's knack for articulating popular outrage at governments' often craven responses to injustice. He says publicly what many leaders think, but don't have the guts to enunciate. As with the evil Milosevic, as with the misguided policies of the International Monetary Fund, Dr. M diagnoses these maladies before most do, and shouts a warning. Mahathir's latest book, A New Deal for Asia (Pelanduk Publications, Kuala Lumpur, 151 pages, $6.60) is another such homily to a Crisis-weakened region.
Mahathir is about the only leader of a democratic, developing country who has the mettle to contradict the big powers. Where others waffle, he cuts to the quick. His disregard for diplomatic niceties applies not only to foreign governments, but also his voters, whom he freely chastises. He and his colleagues come in for self-criticism too - for being naive about "market forces" in the years preceding the Crisis. He writes: "We should have been more skeptical." Mahathir is right about this matter, as he is about many others in this slim volume. But he is wrong about quite a few other things too.
Let us be honest. A New Deal is not a great work. But it is a chastening read and Dr. M says much that needs to be said. In typical fashion, he expresses this in plain language, though the style can be clunky. Basically, it is a book of questions. How did Asia get into the chaos of 1997? Why did the Crisis unfold the way it did? What do we do now? Mahathir admits he has "no 'shiny' new blueprint." After trenchant earlier observations, his unavoidable "cop-out" marks this segment as the weakest in the book. Unavoidable, of course, because no one has a clue how, or if, the world can prevent another comparable financial catastrophe.
Although ostensibly writing about the region, he focuses largely on Malaysia. He begins with a recap of his career over the past 50 years, but the account lacks the bite of his collection of articles, The Early Years 1947-1972. For the next millennium, Mahathir prescribes a hazy "World Century." He argues, for instance, that Asia should embrace globalization, but reject the dominance of one nation or region; it should provide material wealth for all, but should not be subservient to the rule of money. He asks rhetorically if this is "unrealistic idealism." Well, it is. And he would do better to stick to specifics. Many observations have a quaint adolescent flavor. He writes: "Each country in Asia has the right to develop in its own mould, based on its own unique identity and history." Ah, if only that were practicable. In this modern world, it just ain't so. Globalization has put paid to that.
The book's strength is the long section dealing with Malaysia's seemingly inexorable rise during the 1980s and 1990s - and its abrupt fall due to the Crisis. Yes, Mahathir blames the foreign-currency speculators. And he is largely right. Indeed, the evidence for his argument grows as time passes. His attacks on the IMF were initially ridiculed as the rantings of a man who was a few sandwiches short of a full picnic. Then others began to echo his criticisms, until the IMF acknowledged a "slight mistake."
This error has cost Asia dear: "Trillions of dollars of hard-earned assets and economic capacities have been destroyed, lives have been lost, governments have fallen, and racial animosities have intensified." Hats off to Mahathir for saying this. We should not forget that the IMF's drastic medicine helped set the conditions for the riots and violence that wracked Indonesia. That's why Dr. M decided to take Malaysia in the opposite direction with a fixed ringgit exchange rate, recall of overseas deposits of the currency and more stringent stock-market rules. The result: The ringgit's precipitous plunge was arrested and Malaysia got a breather (though some argue this would have happened even without such drastic measures).
This is not to suggest that Mahathir has a magic wand. But he is worth listening to and he does provoke. The prime minister's capacity for provocation is perhaps his greatest attribute. This book will have readers crying "right on." Or "balderdash." There is bound to be a fair amount of the latter, for Mahathir is a great dissembler too. He waxes indignant about how the West lauded the Asian tigers for their economic rise but failed to raise the alarm over graft and other sins. Various experts and the media are taken to task for "after-the-fact" analyses: "Where were these arguments before July 1997?"
This is preposterous. There have been innumerable stories of Thailand's banking system being built on sand, of its corrupt "buffet cabinet" and so on. Critics have persistently denounced nepotism and lack of transparency in Jakarta, Manila, Seoul and, yes, Kuala Lumpur. In 1994, there were copious reports of the Malaysian central bank's $6-billion loss in playing foreign-exchange markets. Soon after, a stocks-for-the-boys controversy erupted when it was revealed that the authorities had allocated shares to relatives of top leaders, including the son-in-law of international trade minister Rafidah Aziz. Others warned of the folly of megaprojects such as the Bakun Dam, Putrajaya, the Petronas Towers and an ill-conceived offshore Northern Airport.
For Mahathir to pretend otherwise is to try to rewrite history. It was not that there were no warnings before the Crisis. Rather, the government ignored these reports - or portrayed them as Western envy of Asian success. As for jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, his allies' open attack on cronyism and corruption in Malaysia may have hastened his political downfall. Mahathir obfuscates about his theory that the West engineered the Crisis to prevent Asia from becoming too dominant in the world economy. Initially setting it out as a given, he ends up writing: "Perhaps there was a plot and perhaps there was not."
Yet it is hard not to share some of the premier's anger. Why, he asks, does the West allow currency traders to impoverish nations within seconds as they electronically transfer billions of dollars? And consider how speedily Long-Term Capital Management, the American hedge fund leveraged to the tune of $1 trillion, was bailed out on the orders of the U.S. Federal Reserve. If only small Asian countries with lesser debts could have been rescued so expeditiously by Western banks.
Regrettably, Mahathir undermines his arguments about the world order with other comments that are frankly daft. He writes that Western society is "riddled with single-parent families, with homosexuality, with cohabitation, with unrestrained avarice." Yet greed and sexual perversity are familiar enough vices in Asia. And the West is not all Sodom and Gommorah. But Dr. M is that rare creature: a leader with a vision. Whether we share it or not, in expressing that vision, he provokes, enrages and enlivens us.
Visit TIME and CNN for the latest regional news analysis