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Is Tun Daim Zainuddin about to return to centre stage?

THE MAN WHO HELPED MALAYSIA and UMNO lose tens of billions of ringgit, guided a generation of Malaysian business men on a fantasy roller-coaster ride of fame, riches, deep financial straits and bankruptcy, is, if current fears are right, to return to "guide" Malaysia's financial and fiscal destiny after Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed retires. Tun Daim Zainuddin, for it is he, now forges links with and Dr Mahathir's successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. They meet, informed sources tell me, twice a week. His network is intact, his group of young -- Mark II -- accountants and deal makers out to become rich beyond Croessus has drifted deliberately into the Badawi network, waiting to pounce. No one seriously believed Tun Daim would retire, when he abruptly left the cabinet two years ago after he could not produce UMNO's accounts for the two decades he was its Treasurer. Too many loose ends to reconcile and settle. If he was Treasurer of PAS or Parti KeADILan Nasional, he would in the same cell block as one Anwar Ibrahim in Sungei Buloh. He is not. He has immunity.

He was Tweedledum to Dr Mahathir's Tweedledee. Both helped bring Malaysia to the brink of bankruptcy. There were two sides of the coin, one protecting the other to do as he pleased. They privatised government assets so the concessionaires, not the people, benefitted. The only ones to benefit, and now in deepest trouble, are the cronies, courtiers and siblings of the Establishment, Malay and Chinese, none of whom have shown their metier in what they set out to do. They owe banks and others RM500 billion and more on an empire of paper, now of more use as toilet paper than bankable financial instruments.

It was during these heady times of outright arrogance that Tun Daim targetted the one man in government who threatened to pull his house of cards down. It was Tun Daim, more than Dr Mahathir, who wanted the then deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, destroyed. When the Hermit of Langgak Golf, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, returned to UMNO in the early 1990s, after he wound up his rebel UMNO party, Semangat '46, Dr Mahathir wanted only one promise out of him: that he would under no circumstances challenge Dato' Seri Anwar for the UMNO presidency. The Hermit was in no doubt Dato' Seri Anwar was the chosen successor. To this day, Dato' Seri Anwar believes that it was Tun Daim, not Dr Mahathir, who is responsible why he is where he is.

Indeed, when his aides and minders insisted that moves were afoot to put him in jail, more than a year before he was, Dato' Seri Anwar brushed it aside. Both Dr Mahathir and Dato' Seri Anwar regarded their relationship as that of a father and son, and Dato' Seri Anwar could not accept, when told, months before it happened, that plans were afoot to displace him. One example would suffice. When they told him, in 1993, he could defeat Tun Ghafar Baba to be UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar wanted proof. A summary was produced, but he wanted the working sheets which, incredulously and against all advice, he handed to Dr Mahathir, who passed it on to Tan Sri Megat Junid Megat Ayob, the former cabinet minister and a Mahathir 'gofer'. The anti-Anwar forces in UMNO and the government had the goods to destroy them. Tun Daim and others in the Mahathir camp realised the implications of Dato' Seri Anwar as Prime Minister. And they moved swiftly. In one misjudged move, Dato' Seri Anwar planned his own destruction. But he also put at risk all those who worked for him. A fatal slip, and not for Dato' Seri Anwar alone.

WHEN THE UMNO Supreme Council two years ago demanded an accounting of UMNO assets, Tun Daim could not. He had not presented a full set of accounts, as the law requires, in his two decades as UMNO Treasurer. He went on leave as finance minister and UMNO Treasurer, but was at his desk in Khazanah throughout. Two years on, there is still no work from him. The UMNO Supreme Council do not expect he would. He abruptly resigned from both when the leave expired. The UMNO heirarchy is not as enamoured of Tun Daim as they once were. But for the persistent demand for the UMNO accounts, in the UMNO Supreme Council, especially from Dato' Shahrir, the issue would have been banished from discussion. Neither Dr Mahathir nor Tun Daim could afford for the accounts to be released. Nowadays the clamour of them is muted: Dato' Shahrir has a different game to play, in the shadow of his mentor, Tan Sri Musa Hitam. And Tun Daim hopes the UMNO accounts is a dead issue.

That he now threatens to return to centre stage so brazenly confounds and frightens. This is where Malaysia's albatross-laden hopes for a vibrant National Front (BN) Prime Minister after Dr Mahathir palls. Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, remains immensely popular, but he is surrounded by a team of business men and politicians who want to be the favoured cronies of the new Prime Minister. It brings his reputation and his undoubted political maturity and decided views to nought. If he misjudges his steps, he is in more trouble than he bargained for. There is talk now Tun Daim would return to the Treasury as finance minister, with possibly Dato' Sharir Samad, the former cabinet minister, as second minister. Or Dato' Shahrir alone in finance. Either or both, in the circumstances, cannot inspire confidence or faith, but exacerbates the confusion, uncertainty, divisions of the latter years of the Mahathir epoch. Dato' Seri Badawi now has backing from three irreconcilliable and mutually hostile groups, each there for their own agenda,

Two powerful groups, Tun Daim's and the former deputy prime minister, Tan Sri Musa Hitam's, join the hangers on, and others dreaming of a business empire at fire sale prices, and this combination is one which could boomerang. Tun Daim wants to protect his crumbling business empire, what with the stock market in such dire straits, and while he is still very wealthy, his business empire could crumble as swiftly and mercilessly as those of his proteges and hangers on. Tan Sri Musa is in the Badawi camp to bring Dr Mahathir down a score of pegs or so. Both tread of dangerous ground, not helped by the others impatient to get their hands on the crumbs of business. But given the circumstances, why then is Tun Daim so insistent he wants to return to centre stage? Is he so badly hit by the turn of events, that he could be in worse condition than he was before the markets headed south? Is he not taking a calculted risk is tempting fate a second time? Is it because fate so far has been so kind to him? And the RM64,000 question: where does this leave Tun Daim with Dr Mahathir?

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my