Malaysia - Mahathir politics - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: Malaysia and Mahathir Malaysia and Mahathir [Institute’s Malaysia and Mahathir Since 31 August 1963, Malaysian politics one of the core values of Malaysian politics has been to exploit the racial and ethnic differences in the country to retain and strengthen their vote banks. Policies such as New Economic Policy and National Development Policy were an attempt to improve the lifestyles and incomes of Malays, which were the local people of Malaysia. These policies have created heated debates in the country and recently Prime Minister Najib Razak did appear to be taking a U-turn by introducing New Economic Model to ensure development across all regions, races, and sectors of the economy (Hooker & Othman, pp. 47-48, 2003). Before coming in power as the Prime Minister of the country, Mahathir Mohammad took a bold stance by writing the book titled “The Malay Dilemma”. He believed that the Malay Dilemma is the fact that many different ethnic groups and communities have ruled the country, learned the language of the native people, took over the resources and business of their ancestors, and exploited them for their own good throughout the Malaysian History. He believed that the Malays had become strangers and salves in their own land. They have the biggest stake in the country and the growing discontent amongst these people was the main cause of the racial riots in the country. The dilemma is that the Malays are forced to accept the systematic steps taken by the government to give them exposure in the economy and according to Mahathir; they should accept it to move forward in order to create an integrated, peaceful, and ethnically diverse Malaysian society (Cheah, pp. 301-302, 2002). During his era, Mahathir placed immense importance on Islam and Islamic principles during his regime in the country. Mahathir believed that Islam strongly stresses on equality and social justice in all lifestyles and the inability of the people to follow those and principles and the inability of the government to implement the same has remained the major cause behind the amplification of Malay Dilemma (Hunter, pp. 264-268). Mahathir gets the credit for the economic progress and development that he brought to the country, which started in the year 1990 when the previous economic policy expired. Mahathir’s National Development Policy was aimed at increasing the share of Malays in the national income to 30 percent, reducing poverty in the country, attracting foreign investment through liberalization and free market economy, improving the infrastructure in the country and others. Until 1997, the Malaysian economy grew at an annual average growth rate of 9 percent. However, the 1998 Asian financial crisis did happen to put the brakes on country’s economic growth (Khoo, 74-75, 2003). In his early years of power, Mahathir has realized that the Dakwah movement is a strong force and in order to ensure his power, he will have to focus on the same as well. Therefore, under Mahathir’s administration, the government placed great importance on Islam and with the help of Anwar Ibrahim, the finance minister of Malaysia then, a process of Islamization started in the country with government adopting a “look east” rather than “look west” policy. In addition, this resulted in increased media coverage for Islam and Islamic issues, increasing funds for Islamic religious organizations, founding Islamic banks and Islamic insurance companies, including Islamic teachings and principles in the school curriculum and others (Mohamad, pp. 20-21, 2010; Peletz, pp. 55, 2002). As a Muslim, Mahathir held this belief that Islam is different from other religions and it is a complete code of life. Therefore, Islam should have its due interference in the matters of State as well. When Mahathir came into power, there was increasing wave of Islamism amongst the Malays who were becoming more religious and more conservative. Since they represented the biggest chunk of Mahathir’s vote bank, he had no choice but to ensure that Islamic teachings should reflect in his policies as well. Important here to understand is that, time and time again, Mahathir has claimed that he does not believe that Islam is a violent religion in itself but violence and bloodshed by Muslims is because of the fact that Muslims have deviated from the basic teachings of Islam (Wain, pp. 152-153, 2010). As mentioned earlier that Mahathir did take various steps for Islamization in the country. Those steps were not targeted at non-Muslims to convert them to Islam but that was targeting the Muslims and trying to reinforce deeper and stronger religious beliefs in their hearts and minds. In the first stage of Islamization in Malaysia, Mahathir and his government included Islamic texts into the educational curriculum and emphasized more on displaying the Islamic architecture throughout the country. The second stage of Islamization included the creation, growth, and expansion of Islamic institutions such as Islamic Banks, Islamic Insurance companies, Mosques, Madarsas, and others. More Islamic courses became a part of the curriculum of universities and more and more students were being sent to the Middle East for becoming Islamic scholars. The third stage, with which the non-Muslims started feeling increasingly uncomfortable, was the expansion of power with the Shariah courts. Malaysia was referred as an Islamic State after 9/11 and police were assigned the responsibility to stop “immoral acts” in the public (Stewart, pp. 89-90, 2003). Mahathir laid down Vision 2020 in the year 1991 who wanted to see Malaysia as a self sufficient and economically viable nation by the end of 2020. Mahathir believed that for achieving the same, the country would have to have a real economic growth of 7 percent over these thirty years. This would allow the country to become a highly industrialized nation. Vision 2020 is a picture of a highly prosperous, tolerant, liberal, progressive, developed, moral, scientific, technologically advanced, and competitive society (Sharma, pp. 52-54, 2003). Conflicts between Mahathir and Ibrahim emerged during the late 1990s when it was revealed that there are huge differences between the two leaders in their way and approach to governance. Mahathir groomed Ibrahim as his successor and this was also the general impression but after seeing the disappointing show by Ibrahim during the two month period when Mahathir was on a vacation and Ibrahim was in charge of the country, cracks became wide open in their relationship. Mahathir sacked him and opened cases against him in order to keep him away from political activities (Milne & Mauzy, pp. 341-342, 1999). Unlike other countries, Malaysia does not have a huge Islamic majority and only 60 percent of the people in the country are Muslims, which means that any acts of Islamization increase discontent amongst 40 percent of the population of the country, which is indeed a huge figure. Questions were raised that if Malaysia were to be an Islamic state, which model would it follow. Would it be Saudi Arabian model with strict rules and law enforcement or the Pakistani Model where the laws are Islamic but enforcement is weak? (Saw & Kesavapany, 2006) Mahathir has always had problems in terms of ideologies with PAS. Mahathir has identified himself as a moderate Muslims whereas, PAS is a fundamentalist Islamic Party, which talks only about Islam, In fact, their manifesto lacks any details on economy and social issues but the only focus is on Islamization of the State and enforcement of Shariah which is hoped to be the solution of all problems. Recently, Mahathir bashed party for wanting to implement Hudood laws in the country (Hilley, pp. 196-197, 2001). As mentioned earlier that Mahathir dealt with the threat of Anwar by using his power in via law enforcement agencies and judiciary. All the cases and allegations against Anwar were brought into public so that he could be put into prison for a while. During the Asian Financial crisis, initially Mahathir followed the policies of IMF to put government spending and increase interest rates. However, this only made matters worse for the country. Therefore, Mahathir quickly decided to peg its currency to US dollar, use the Keynesian approach of big government and increased government spending, and lower interest rates. The approach quickly generated results and Malaysia’s recovery was the fastest amongst all countries in the South East region (Dhillon, pp. 36-37, 2009; Peletz, pp. 55, 2002). References Cheah, Boon Kheng. 2002. Malaysia: the making of a nation. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Dhillon, Karminder Singh. 2009. Malaysian foreign policy in the Mahathir era, 1981-2003: dilemmas of development. NUS Press. Hilley, John. 2001. Malaysia: Mahathirism, hegemony and the new opposition. Zed Books. Hooker, Virginia Matheson., & Othman, Norani. 2003. Malaysia: Islam, society and politics. Springer. Hunter, Shireen T. 2009. Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity. M.E. Sharpe. Khoo, Boo Teik. 2003. Beyond Mahathir: Malaysian politics and its discontents. Zed Books. Milne, Robert Stephen, & Mauzy, Diane K. 1999. Malaysian politics under Mahathir. Routledge. Mohamad, Mahathir bin. 2010. The Malay dilemma. Marshall Cavendish Editions. Peletz, Michael G. 2002. Islamic modern: religious courts and cultural politics in Malaysia. Princeton University Press. Saw, Swee-Hock., & Kesavapany, K. 2006. Malaysia: recent trends and challenges. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Sharma, Shalendra D. 2003. The Asian financial crisis: crisis, reform, and recovery. Manchester University Press. Stewart, Ian. 2003. The Mahathir legacy: a nation divided a region at risk. Allen & Unwin. Wain, Barry. 2010. Malaysian maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in turbulent times. Palgrave Macmillan. Read More