Today's World Is Almost Like a World at War

Cambodia Daily Publisher Bernard Krisher and Night Editor Ryun Patterson interviewed Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Oct 25, 2002 at Malaysia’s administrative capital of Putrajaya. Mahathir became Malaysia’s fourth prime minister in 1981. Born in 1925, he studied medicine in Singapore and was a doctor before entering politics in 1945. He has been a member of the United Malays National Organization since its inception in 1946 and UMNO president since 1981. Under his leadership the ruling party, Barisan Nasional (National Front), won landslide victories in the 1982, 1986, 1990, 1995 and 1999 general elections. He announced he will step down from his post next year.

Bernard Krisher/The Cambodia Daily Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad "Asean wasn’t formed for the purpose of economic cooperation. It was formed to resolve problems between neighboring countries—between Malaysia and the Philippines and Indonesia in those days." —Mahathir Mohamad

Despite his achievements in Malaysia’s industrialiazation and economic growth, Mahathir is burdened by the arrest and subsequent conviction of former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, jailed for corruption and sodomy, charges critics contend were politically motivated.

Bernard Krisher and Ryun Patterson: What should the relationship be between the richer and the poorer members of Asean?

Prime Minister Mahathir: We have identified them as LDC [less-developed countries]; that is, behind the others, and therefore there is a need for us to lend a helping hand wherever we can and that’s what we want to do. We are concerned that they should develop and gain parity with the other Asean countries.

Q: What specifically would Malaysia like to gain out of this summit?

A: Our aim has always been to help our neighbors because indirectly it benefits us. By helping to raise the prosperity of our neighbors we face fewer problems.

Q: What effect did September 11 have on the world, the region and Malaysia?

A: It obviously changed the world. The world lives in fear now. People are afraid to travel, afraid to fly, and when they don’t travel and they don’t fly it affects a lot of business, certainly the tourist business which means hotels, airlines and tour agencies are all affected. Since [such businesses] contribute considerably to the economies of many countries, Sept 11 will affect them adversely. Not much money is being spent nowadays. I’m afraid even the rich countries are not spending money on productive projects but investing in defense and security, which is a no-return kind of investment. Thus lot of money is being diverted toward taking care of people’s fears, governments’ fears, not much left for investment.

Q: Asean has existed now for almost 30 years, but it doesn’t seem to be moving yet in an EU kind of direction. Do you foresee Asean becoming a type of EU at some point?

A: Asean wasn’t formed for the purpose of economic cooperation. It was formed to resolve problems between neighboring countries—between Malaysia and the Philippines and Indonesia in those days. To the extent that we were able, we resolved many of the political problems between neighbors. The idea of economic cooperation comes later. When people look at the European Union, they think Asean should be like the European Union. But the European Union is a grouping of countries with practically the same historical, cultural, religious even language background. So it’s much easier for them. Their level of economic development is also nearly the same. Now, of course, they’re having difficulty trying to handle Eastern Europe, which is quite different from them. It took Europe 50 long years to become a European Union. It hasn’t been easy. They started off with cooperation in the steel industry and went on to become the EEC, and, by stages, it has taken a long, long time. Now the countries of Southeast Asia are even more diversified, more different from each other, in all respects: Culture, religion, language, level of economic development, outlook and historical background. So it is going to take a long, long time.

Q: Do you think Asean faces a serious threat from China’s growing economy?

A: We can’t say there isn’t a threat. There is a threat but Asean may be able to complement China. We have practically the same approach to economic development. We also have a big market, half the size of China’s, of course, but if you average it out our per capita is quite high. We have certain skills, certain attractions, so we can compete.

Q: Is Asean being victimized by globalization? Or is it taking advantage of globalization?

A: Both. We welcome globalization but we see certain aspects of globalization as threatening. For example, we see companies merging and acquiring each other in order to become huge, and they are demanding that we open our borders to them and there should be no regulations; that they should be treated as national companies, in which case, of course, our companies, which are tiny, won’t be able to compete. Nor can we compete against their banks. There’s the fear we will be swallowed up. We’ve also seen what currency traders can do. They can actually destroy an economy within a very short space of time. It took us 30 years to build up an economy and in one week they can destroy it. This creates fear. Or look at the stock market. People aren’t investing in the stock market for dividends; they are investing for capital gains, and it’s easy to manipulate. Even if they don’t do short selling, they can still manipulate the stock market, push it down, push it up, because for some investors, it’s not the profitability of the company which matters, it’s whether the index moves up or down. It must move. A static index is of no interest to them. And these people have huge sums of money on call. With such money, more money in fact than many of the Asean countries, they can do whatever they like. That’s why we fear globalization.

Q: I’d like to get you to talk a little more deeply about China and the competitive threat and what the Asean nations can do.

A: China is a threat, but China is also going to be a big market. When China becomes rich, it will need certain things that it cannot produce or will not produce. It may concentrate on some areas. Certainly when Chinese are rich they will want to travel more. We are seeing huge growth in Chinese tourists, for example, and when they are rich they will spend money. That will benefit us. As far as Malaysia is concerned, they will still need our palm oil, and they will need our oil and gas. Their demand for oil and gas is bound to grow once they become prosperous. Our figures show that while we import some electronics from them, they also import electronics from us. At the moment I think the trade balance is in our, Malaysia’s, favor. The Chinese are beginning to invest in Southeast Asia. Among their needs, of course, is paper. They cannot produce enough paper for their own use. So they will be looking around. They have come to Malaysia, they want to produce paper for their own use. And eventually there will be still more Chinese investment in Southeast Asia.

Q: But paper is a double-edged sword. It’s deforestation, it harms the environment. Do you have enough trees to maintain that?

A: We can grow quick-growing trees, fast growing trees. We have sufficient land area. We don’t have to clear everything. We can still grow a lot of these trees in between the old forest trees, sufficient to feed a paper mill.

Q: Should Asean be doing more against the threat of terrorism?

A: We are doing our very best. It is not easy, the fight against terrorism. We can erect barriers, increase security, increase our defense capabilities, but that’s not really the way to fight terrorism. To fight terrorists we have to look at the root cause and attend to that.

Q: Do you think the fight that is currently going on can exist alongside the protection of human rights?

Q: Do you feel more comfortable with the Bush administration than you did with the Clinton administration in terms of pushing US policies on other countries, after Sept 11?

A: The Bush administration has not sent somebody here to urge the people to rise up and overthrow the government. That’s what Al Gore did. He came here and he told Malaysians right in my face to overthrow, literally to overthrow my government. The Bush administration has not done that. So we are a little bit more comfortable with the Bush administration.

Q: How do you feel about the policy of non-intervention among the Asean countries? I know that you support this very much, but if you have a situation like Pol Pot or another Hitler, do you think that Asean should consider intervening?

A: When Pol Pot was running Cambodia he was not in Asean. The world allowed him to do that. They did not intervene, when they should. Now, although there is no intervention, you may notice that we interact with the other countries and we try to be helpful.

Q: But if there was another Pol Pot in the region, would you favor intervening?

A: There will be ways of intervening that don’t amount to actually interfering with their administration.

Q: How do you feel about Saddam Hussein and the kind of intervention the US would like to take?

A: Well, I’m not talking for Saddam Hussein. The United States may not like him, but, Number One, I don’t think that foreign governments should set up governments in other countries. You may not like the leader of that country, but it happens that he is the leader. Number Two, you can’t punish his people, who had no say in his forming the government, because you don’t like him. Now the people of Iraq are being punished for years now. They have been deprived of medicine, food and money. They have become very poor, with no education; they don’t even have a pencil to write with.

Q: Some people would say, though, that this is comparable to a situation where your neighbor beats his children, or starves them. He might argue that this is his home; you have no right to come in, but people might counter that in a situation like that, you do go in and you save the children.

A: You can say that you should save the child. But certainly you must not aggravate the child’s situation by putting a barrier around the house to make sure that the child gets no medicine for treating the beatings. Now the people of Iraq have been beaten, that is what people accuse Saddam of, and then you erect a barrier around the country and the people who have been beaten are now also being starved, and they’re deprived of medicine. Is that how you treat a child who is being beaten?

Q: Why do think it is that there are so many women leaders in Southeast Asia among cultures that are predominantly male dominated?

A: This is a new phenomenon. In our universities almost 70 percent of the students are women. And they are better qualified. I don’t know what the men are doing, what the boys are doing. They don’t seem to be keen to study and work. A lot of them are being diverted by politics. They are much more keen on this kind of activity because it carries no responsibility, it is not a burden on them. But women have always been more work-oriented, even in the house. But now they are out of the house, the tendency to work, to not waste time, is a trait among them.

Q: Do you see that as a trend that will grow in the future, female leaders?

A: Yes, I think so. In our government, more and more of the heads of ministries are women. And more and more engineers are women. Even in the air force we have women pilots now.

Q: Do you ever see a woman becoming a prime minister?

A: It is a possibility, I don’t know. Maybe not in the near future.

Q: You would not have appointed a woman as a deputy prime minister?

A: I don’t appoint on the basis of a person being a woman or a man. I go according to their ability and their acceptability.

Q: There appears to be a paradox in the way that you have pushed information technology and opened up your country to IT, and yet IT challenges the control government can have over information. Do you see the conflict there? How can you handle it?

A: It’s a question of taking the good with the bad. It’s up to us to sift through and see which one’s the good one for us. But there is no way we can shut out these things anymore. You can’t censor the Internet, so what do you do? If we deprive ourselves of the usefulness of the Internet we are going to go south. It’s a question of having to accept it. If you want to have some of the good, the bad will come along with it.

Q: If that is the case, the Internet may be much more widespread and influential than the print media, so why bother to even censor or control the print media?

A: We don’t censor or control the print media. I would like to emphasize that because the Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal are both printed here. We have never touched what they say and they have said nasty things about us. We have never censored them. If we censored these papers then we would not allow them to print or be distributed here. Our newspapers are like European newspapers: Some favor the government, some are dead set against the government. The problem is those which are against the government: you don’t even bother to read. Just go and read some of these opposition papers. They say a lot of things against the government. If we are in the business of censoring papers, controlling papers, they wouldn’t be published at all.

Q: But they have controlled circulation.

A: No they are not limited. They are in fact breaking the law every day. They are supposed to be party papers to be distributed only to party members. But they are selling openly. Against the law. Without permission. Still we don’t stop them. When Western people ask about freedom of the press here, or mention Malaysia even, they say ‘where the press is controlled.’ Tell me which one we control. Sure, the New Straits Times supports us, but then in England the Daily Mirror always supports one party and the Times supports another party. Do you say that it’s controlled?

Q: How should Asean deal with poverty?

A: Poverty can only be dealt with if the country becomes rich enough. In Malaysia we reduced poverty, from about 70 percent at the time we gained independence to 7 percent today. Absolute poverty is only 1 percent. That’s because we have the money. We build free houses for the absolutely poor or incapacitated. We create jobs for them. But that’s because we make money. Our country is relatively prosperous. But if you find a country which is very poor and becomes poorer because of strangulation from outside, like applying sanctions on them, of course they can’t really get up.

Q: What is the root cause of poverty? What would you advise, based on your experience here in Malaysia, if you had to lead a very poor country, say the last four members admitted to Asean?

Q: Do you think Asean is moving fast enough?

A: I am a man in a hurry, I would like to go faster. But I have to accept the fact that when a ship is in a convoy, the speed of the ship is the speed of the slowest ship.

Q: One word that always comes up in media reports about you is ‘controversy.’ Is that a correct depiction?

A: I myself don’t understand it. Whatever I say can be backed by facts. If I say that the interpretation of globalization is bad, it is because it has been proven. I’m not saying something controversial, I’m just saying something that is obvious. But because other people have other agendas, they don’t like what I say. One question generally is ‘Why is Malaysia not democratic?’ Well, we are a democracy. We can change our government through the ballot box. There are some countries where even if you get elected, they don’t allow you to sit in parliament, and nobody complains. So, in comparison we are much more democratic that many other countries.

Q: Is Asian democracy different from Western democracy?

A: Western democracy is Western democracy. That doesn’t mean because we are not a Western democracy or a liberal democracy we are not a democracy. We are a democracy. The essence of democracy is the ability to change the government through the ballot box, through free elections. And that you can do here.

Other things are an addenda, things that are created: ‘You must have human rights, you must not have child labor, you must have press freedom.’ These are additions. And even press freedom. In any country there is no freedom, not even in America, not even in Europe. Somebody is controlling the press. It may be the editor. It may be the owner. It may be Mr. Murdoch. It may be the government. Somebody is controlling it. If I say something, the press refuses to print it if I say something they don’t like. So I don’t enjoy press freedom. So who’s talking about press freedom? There is no press freedom. They have censored me the whole way through. Whenever I say anything, they pick out something that is bad and publish it. They never hear my explanation. Suppose I say that the newspapers in this country are not controlled. It’s not going to appear anywhere. I give my views freely. People talk about free speech, I am trying to enjoy free speech. But I don’t enjoy press freedom.