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The Prime Minister led Malaysia to yesterday's sunset not tomorrow's dawn

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI MAHATHIR Mohamed, has less than 40 days left in office. He says oft and on he would step down as he promised on 31 October. Nothing he does makes that clear. His staff has not started packing their bags. He struts around the world as if his successor, Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, does not matter. He addresses the United Nations General Assembly this week. He continues to dominate the administration. He makes the final decisions. Pak Lah defers to him on all matters. Even the official and mainstream media hedge their bets with such weasel words as "in what is said to be his last" act as Prime Minister". He has one more international conference to attend before he retires: the OIC summit in Kuala Lumpur. He insists he is Prime Minister until the minute he leaves, making it difficult for Pak Lah to prepare for the transition. Pak Lah is piqued by it as his supporters and UMNO generally.

After Dr Mahathir, who is also finance minister, delivered "in what is said to be his last" Budget as finance minister, a Pak Lah-orchestrated round of applause in the Parliament chamber took him by suprise. The succession is in trouble so long as Dr Mahathir shows no sign of stepping down. It weakens Pak Lah politically by the day - and possibly a challenge for the UMNO presidency at the party elections next year. But Dr Mahathir cannot stay on unless he throws caution to the winds and insist he would stay on until the general elections. This was discussed with some army generals who, to everyone's surprise, said if they are brought in for any reason to administer the country, they would leave only when they decide to, not so the politicians want them to. The political indecisions over the armed forces, the neglect of the rank and file amidst a flurry of military hardware purchases worth tens of billions of ringgit and forced on them have soured relations between the politicians and the armed forces. He has singlehandedly alienated the armed forces from the Establishment.

The defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. is not trusted: he has had his way with the generals by overriding their recommendations to insist upon his own. He does by saying he would discuss it with the Prime Minister. One general said he does not believe it and is a ruse to have his way. He did that twice in recent months, on the appointment of the new army chief and on the recent purchase of military hardware which is then rammed down their throats. But hardware purchases provide the ruling party with ready cash. If the rumours swirling around the Prime Minister's visit to Sweden have any basis, it is to arrange for a US$400 million in kickbacks upfront for the purchase of Saab Awacs - as seed money for the coming general elections. I am also told that if this is not forthcoming - the Swedes have unusually tough rules about such extortion - it would be Brazilian Awacs next on the list.

I mentioned this to a well-connected UMNO MP who in high dudgeon claimed I defamed UMNO and the good doctor. I asked him how is it then that a supplier of office stationery to a government has to "take care" of the officials who order it but when the order is for tens of billions of US dollars, there is no corruption or kickbacks involved. Why was it necessary then for a hasty appointment of the Malaysian Mining Corporation (MMC) as an agent for Polish tanks just before a deal for it was signed in Warsaw? If what I hear is true, the New Straits Times group is in such shambles because of a RM1 billion purchase of a printing plant, bought for no reason than the ten per cent kickback. Its revenues cannot even meet the annual interest costs. Now its identity is submerged in a new entity called Media Prima after it merges with another UMNO-controlled money bleeder, TV3.

The Prime Minister has not lost his taste for extravagance. He spends the country's money as if there is no tomorrow. He suffuses himself with every modern gadet worth hundreds of millions of US dollars to show he can. He has all but bankrupted the nation with his penchant for massive structures and other loss-making projects. He has helped bankrupt Petronas with his desire for a national capital that would rival any on earth and last centuries. But it is constructed so it would not last decades. Especially with our fascination for building but not maintaining it. Pak Lah now calls for a "culture of maintenance". It is nothing new. Dr Mahathir had called for it several times. So did his predecessors, Tun Hussein Onn, Tun Abdul Razak, Tengku Abdul Rahman. How could there be when huge sums are set aside for maintenance do not trickle down to the company who is to do it. So much of it has been siphoned off that there is little left for it. Compound that with a nationwide belief that money-making is more interesting than working for a living, and that cannot be erased with frequent calls for a maintenance culture. Go to the toilets at the ultramodern Kuala Lumpur International Airport, or indeed into the government offices in Putra Jaya, and you would know what I mean.

As he prepares to leave, he has ordered another RM100 million round of extravagance. He has asked for a re-landscaping of Putra Jaya. Officials are horrified at it, Who would pay for it? That good old standby, Petronas. Once its oil wealth was to kept in trust for future generations. But Dr Mahathir, when he took office, had other ideas. He decided that Malaysia and the Malay must be force-fed into a modern industrialised society and began his orgy of construction and waste which Petronas, by and large, underwrote. Putra Jaya is one. It has spent RM20 billion for the first phase - when it is completed, it could cost upwards of RM100 billion. It now shrinks at the annual RM2 billion cost of maintaining it. As an election gimmick, Petronas was to have shown a RM200 billion profit for last year, but the best it could manage was RM49 billion. He ignores Parliament in his orgy of extravagance, the Putra Jaya costs are not brought to Parliament because it has no oversight of off-budget agencies like Petronas. But this extravagance has forced Petronas to consider its fate with that of the Indonesian oil company, Pertamina, which collapsed spectacularly in the 1970s in the same mix of waste, corruption and profligacy.

He stayed on too long. If he had departed in 1996, he would have been the visionary leader he wants to be remembered as. He did not. His arrogance took over, he believed he is the only leader Malaysia should ever want. He has spent a RM1 billion and more on his overseas travels in his 22 years in office. Feudal arrogance means he is surrounded by sycophants who would tell him nothing. He has dismissed staff for telling him what is wrong. He sees that as treachery. No one can second guess him. He dismissed from his cabinet anyone who had a different view. He only wanted a legion of worshippers who believed in his words of wisdom. And that sunk him. He led the National Front (BN) and UMNO into near oblivion. His arrogant despatch of his deputy prime minister at the time, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, into jail helped it in no small measure. The Malay ground is split. UMNO has lost its way and its constituency, and with it BN. Its Treasury is gone, mismanaged by its long-time Treasurer, former finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin, who has still not delivered its accounts since 1981 he promised two years ago.

With all these weighing heavily on him, he has understandable reasons for staying on. But he cannot. He has outstayed his welcome. If he stays on, UMNO and BN would have a tougher time to hold on to what they have when general election come around. He is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. He is worried if Pak Lah would be his Habibie. His negotiations with potential successors is so he and his children would not be held to account. President Suharto's successor, President B.J. Habibie, promised him protection but he could not ensure it. I do not agree the Prime Minister should be held to account for his misdeeds in office. For that, we are all to blame. We did not stop him. It is no use saying now that he would have ignored us. The powerful voices who could have preferred silence and access to wealth. But this immunity should not granted any other, including his children. He wants to be remembered as the man who brought Malaysia into the dawn of tomorrow, but he would go down in history as the man who led Malaysia into the sunset of yesterday.

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