Mahathir Hospitalized

Dr Mahathir Mohamad was admitted to the National Heart Institute (IJN) at 3.30am this morning after suffering a mild heart attack.

The combative and outspoken Mr. Mahathir has not taken easily to retirement. Credited with modernizing Malaysia and making it a global player, he has been on a crusade against his handpicked successor, Abdullah Badawi, accusing him of corruption, nepotism and economic mismanagement.

Professor Norani Othman, at the Institute of Malaysian and International Affairs in Kuala Lumpur, says Mr. Mahathir's campaign has tarnished his reputation as the country's elder statesman.

"It seems as he cannot still just resign and be in the backroom. And what he is doing is something that he himself wouldn't have put up with when he was prime minister," he said.

During his three-year tenure, Prime Minister Abdullah has been credited with allowing more freedom of expression than his predecessor about sensitive issues such as race and religion in multi-ethnic Malaysia.

HISTORY OF HEART TROUBLE

Mahathir, a former medical doctor, has a history of heart trouble but even in retirement has kept a busy schedule of public engagements and trips abroad. He had bypass surgery in 1989.

Mokhzani declined to say if the feud had hurt his father's health but said the former premier had kept a very busy schedule lately, including a visit to New Zealand this week.

"He had been a travelling a lot ... He had quite a hectic schedule and he ate too much," Mokhzani said.

A controversial figure in the West, outspoken Mahathir is viewed at home as the father of modern Malaysia. He hastened the country's transformation from a mainly rural economy to an industrial trading nation, spending lavishly on infrastructure.

Abdullah has struggled to advance his own reforms, such as reining in the budget deficit and shelving major state projects, without incurring the wrath of Mahathir and the ex-premier's supporters who see them as an attack on Mahathir's legacy.

Asked how Malaysian politics and business would be affected when Mahathir left the scene, political expert Ooi Kee Beng, of Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies, said Abdullah's government could then focus more on its own agenda.

"But I don't know if it will be the end of the Mahathir dissatisfaction," he said. "There might be people around Mahathir who might want to continue influencing the government in certain ways. His heritage might continue in a sense."


Meanwhile,Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday he would attend next week's annual assembly of the country's ruling party, and dared his critics to try to expel him for attacking the current leadership.

Get well soon, Tun Dr Mahathir.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said he felt proud that the country had surpassed an important milestone in its human development index.

Abdullah, who is also the Finance Minister said Malaysia had been redesignated as a high human development country, up from a medium human development country.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched worldwide its annual flagship publication 'The Human Development Report 2006' which published the Human Development Index (HDI) that ranked Malaysia 61st out of 177 countries.

"What this effectively does is to place Malaysia firmly in the same league as the developed countries,"


Malaysia Says No Excessive Speculation on Ringgit

By Stephanie Phang and David Yong - Bloomberg

Malaysia's central bank Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said she doesn't see any excessive speculation on the ringgit and movements have been ``orderly.''

The currency has risen 3.5 percent since July 21, 2005, when a peg to the dollar was scrapped and the ringgit revalued 0.7 percent. It's managed against an undisclosed basket of currencies. When asked if Malaysia is diversifying its foreign exchange reserves out of U.S. dollars, Zeti declined comment.

``It will be expected that there will be market volatility and our reserves management is to look at the medium-term,'' Zeti said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia doesn't ``respond to short-term volatility. At this stage, we are very comfortable with our already highly diversified portfolio'' of reserves.

The ringgit traded at 3.6458 per dollar as of 3:45 p.m. local time. The currency is up 1.2 percent this quarter, trailing gains in regional counterparts such as the Thai baht, Singapore dollar and Indonesian rupiah.

Malaysia's foreign-exchange reserves have risen 13 percent this year to $79.64 billion as of Oct. 31, of which about 80 percent are kept in foreign-denominated assets, according to central bank data.

``We diversified our reserves a number of years ago and we have been very comfortable with the position for a few years now,'' Zeti said.

**********

Radical Islam in Southeast Asia

Far Eastern Economic Review
November 2006, 60th Anniversary Issue

By Anwar Ibrahim (Source: Anwar Ibrahim blog)

In the war against terrorism, the United States regards Southeast Asia
as a “second front,” with attention focused on radical Islamist groups
said to be working with al Qaeda. This appellation belies the region’s
tradition of tolerance and its demonstrated modernist outlook with
respect to the importance of the rule of law and preservation of human
rights. While perpetrators and purveyors of violence deserve swift
retribution, over the coming decade radicalizing trends can be dissuaded
by emphasizing the peaceful and democratic traditions of the region
rather then providing governments with carte blanche to trample on human
rights and civil liberties in the name of national security.

In attempting to frame a discourse of the impact of Islam in the
governments of Southeast Asia, policy makers as well as academics are
prone to view Islam in binary terms: it’s either moderate or extremist,
liberal or conservative, reformist or traditional. This of course is a
throwback to the Orientalist slant of the past with its propensity for
sweeping generalizations. One will recall, for instance, Clifford
Geertz’s The Religion of Java (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960) where Javanese
society was seen as essentially bipolar in terms of its religious
orientation—as between Santri and Abangan, the former representing the
religious and pious minority group led by their kyai, living in communal
pesantren, and the latter comprising the majority of Javanese,
supposedly merely nominal Muslims, being very much attached to the
Javanese pre-Islamic art forms and practices, and largely heedless of
their religious obligations. These same pesantren, just like madrassas
in other parts of Southeast Asia as well as in Pakistan, are now
regarded as hotbeds for the breeding of Muslim fundamentalists. The
upshot of such a perception is to pigeonhole organizations founded on
Islamic precepts as being radical with a tendency of turning into or
associating with terrorist bodies, no doubt a manifestation of a
prejudiced and Islamophobic mindset which prevents one from discerning
between mainstream political Islam and its more extremist peripheries.

This oversimplified view is unfortunately shared by the so-called
enlightened statesmen in the region. Their formula for responding to
radicalism has been policy prescriptions based on firepower, economic
strength and an overall patronizing attitude towards the Muslim
communities. Surely such a policy cannot be sustained in the long term
nor can it be regarded as one based on foresight and wisdom. It fails to
recognize that Muslim-dominant countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia
in the past effectively checked the spread of communist movements such
as the Malayan Communist Party and the Partai Komunis Indonesia.

For example, the conventional view that attributes the failure of the
communist insurgency in Malaysia solely to the policy of the British
colonial powers in winning “the hearts and minds” of the people is
flawed in as much as it ignores the role of Muslim scholars and
organizations in countering the psychological warfare of the communists.
It also disregards the long history of moderation that so typifies Islam
in Southeast Asia and has enabled its communities to resist the
ideological onslaughts of the resurgence of the early decades of the
last century in the Middle East. Sound policies for engaging Muslims
cannot be formulated without a thorough understanding of this unique
historical experience, and this understanding will not come from clichéd
notions of Islam nor by viewing political Islam as a dangerous monolith.
The approach must be based on a sustained commitment to build upon the
overriding feature of moderation and to help in the most unobtrusive way
to preserve its legacy while actively engaging the more radical sectors.

Unfortunately governments in the region have forsaken a more moderate
strategy of tolerance and accommodation while pursuing pro-growth
economic policies, and have instead embraced the new theology of
antiterrorism. In doing so they are walking on egg shells by embracing
the U.S., a partner whose foreign policy is marked by that Wilsonian
determination that led it to invade Iraq unilaterally. It should come as
no surprise that prescriptions for the security of the region issuing
from America are treated with skepticism, particularly by Muslim
communities, which see the familiar pattern of Draconian laws clouded in
secrecy now surfacing from an unlikely co-conspirator.

No doubt this is symptomatic of the rise in anti-American sentiment. But
the spread of Islamic radicalism in Southeast Asia must be understood in
the broader context of the region’s history and not only through the
lens of Sept. 11. While the ascription of extraneous causes such as
sympathies with the plight of the Palestinians or the unjust occupation
of Iraq does carry a certain air of justification, it doesn’t take long
to see that after separating the romance from the hard facts, the
problems are essentially homegrown and far more varied than the generic
label of al Qaeda would suggest.

Looking to the future, there are several challenges that must be
addressed throughout Southeast Asia. In southern Thailand, where
increasing radicalism of Muslims tends to hog the headlines for the
wrong reasons, it is imperative that the powers that be address the
fundamental causes which hark back to centuries of demand for self-rule.
Again, a policy predicated on a systematic effort to eradicate the
mother tongue of a community, apart from being manifestly racist, is
doomed to failure. Fortunately the recent statements by the Thai
authorities that they are prepared to negotiate with the separatists
should be viewed as a positive development giving hope that an equitable
and just resolution may be in sight.

While we know that the recent terrorist outbursts in Manila were more in
the mold of the Bali bombings, the authorities should not forget that
the Moro uprising in the southern Philippines more than 20 years ago
stemmed from political and socioeconomic factors which have no bearing
with the current acts of terror. It had everything to do with the
marginalization of poor Muslims, so that while such disadvantages
continue unchecked radical groups are bound to grow.

Indonesia has moved past the New Order and into the era of reformasi,
having emerged from the ruins of a military dictatorship. Who are we to
remind them of the evils of government based on tyranny, coercion and
repression? On the contrary, we should take lessons from the bitter
consequences suffered as a result of such a protracted reign of
unchecked power which also saw the violent explosion of interethnic
killing and bloodshed.

In this regard, the racist chanting of certain leaders is a grim
reminder of the devastating impact of absolute power. When government
policies are drawn along chauvinistic lines and marked by discriminatory
practices, discontent is bound to foment. This problem must be tackled
at the core while allowing for civil society to blossom. Democratic
space must continue to be opened and not further eroded. In Malaysia,
the call by dissident voices has been to move beyond the decades-old
paradigm of the New Economic Policy and forge a blueprint to narrow the
economic divide regardless of ethnic lines. This new vision contrasts
sharply with Lee Kwan Yew’s recent hectoring of Singapore’s neighbors
not to marginalize their Chinese citizens. His rant is emblematic of the
older generation of leaders trapped in the mindset of race-based
politics that prohibits greater social cohesion and development. What
about the plight of the majority of Malays, the Indians and the
estimated 4o million abject poor in Indonesia or even the predicament of
the minority Malays in Singapore?

There is no denying that imported terrorism has stoked the domestic
radical fire and led to despicable acts of violence in the region. This
is clearly an aberration confined to small pockets. However it would be
shortsighted if the policies adopted in Southeast Asia in response to
these threats were too heavy-handed and dictated in large part by the
expediency of relations with a superpower. By asking the right questions
and reaching the correct conclusions, it is clear that we must deal
effectively with the causes or risk fanning the flames. My hope is that
we in Asia can, in the next decade, discover the confidence and resolve
to recognize the rights of the people and to oppose those who would
usurp those freedoms. As the region moves down the path of democracy it
should firmly embrace its intrinsically pluralistic culture and work to
adopt pro-growth and market-driven policies that will ensure a more
sustainable development. A prosperous future is indivisible from a firm
commitment to the principles of distributive justice, the rule of law
and a profound respect for human rights.

(Anwar, a former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, is a visiting
professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.)


Malaysia Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Tun Mahathir Anwar Asia