from the corridor at three a.m
rises and falls, faint murmurs
lapping at the walls
of my room
creeping in the corners to
unfurl the dark spaces in my mind
where memories surge like breakers
on a reef
swallow and break over each other.
When Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad finally announced the inevitable sacking of his Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Anwar Ibrahim on September 3, 1998 following the introduction of Keynesian-style capital controls a day earlier, a group of anti-imperialists and third world nationalists proclaimed that Mahathir had finally laid to rest the so called neo-liberal malaise that Anwar had purportedly subjected the Malaysian economy to with disastrous results.
Anwar was branded as a puppet of the IMF, who was simply seeking personal glory ‘by choosing to sell the interest of Malaysians to foreigners’. Mahathir – himself considered an authoritarian leader who had destroyed the key institutional instruments of governance in Malaysia to check any credible challenges to his leadership – became an icon among these anti-imperialists the world over.
Using evidence from my advisory role, this commentary is targeted to correct this presumptuous claim. Instead of focusing on the scientific and historical evidence associated with epistemology, the anti-imperialists and pseudo critics of the Washington Consensus( IMF, the World Bank and the US Treasury) found a straw man in Anwar and a savior in Mahathir to build this ‘great story’ of how Mahathir saved Malaysia from certain collapse by ‘discontinuing Anwar’s deleterious neoliberal financial policies’.
While I have much to say about the circumstances that faced Malaysia in 1997 which offered the country the option of seeking capital controls when Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines had to go cap in hand to the IMF, I focus on Anwar’s actions as Malaysia’s Finance Minister.
Anwar had time again insisted in some of his meetings that the free flow of capital and the Malaysian ringgit was causing havoc to exchange rates and the stock market. He even lamented once over the massive offshore ringgit kept in Singapore that affected Bank Negara’s capacity to manage monetary policy. He cited that instruments were necessary to provide sufficient control of the ringgit against volatile fluctuations caused by currency traders. What he did not share with Mahathir was his stand on corruption and cronyism.
I remember Anwar saying that all Government linked Companies(GLCs) destabilized by losses should be supported with fresh loans but only after proper audit scrutiny. Now no scholar or sensible politician – whatever their ideological learnings - would support bailouts that arise from losses in consumer benefits through a misallocation of funds to the corrupt and incapable. Anwar was in support of Keynesian style packages but wanted them introduced alongside instruments that would weed out corruption.
Anwar was also serious about fiscal policies to take account of distributive justice in the months between December, 1997 and April, 1998. In fact, he had dismissed a report prepared by a team of IMF-style consultants on measures to rescue the East Asian economies affected by the 1997-98 Financial crisis. He had written on the cover of that report that it must be rewritten to address problems of social justice.
I was approached by his advisors to rewrite the report and took it on eventually after his team headed by Khalid Jaafar agreed to allow me to change it completely. It was unfortunate that Anwar did not manage to present it as he was replaced by Daim Zainuddin and sacked by Mahathir.Yet, there is enough historical evidence to back Anwar’s claim that he is a believer in social justice. After all, mentored by the widely respected social activist and former University of Malaya academic Professor Dr Syed Husin Ali during his undergraduate days, Anwar was arrested and jailed for his role in championing the rights of the poor during the Baling riots and the protests he commandeered as a student union leader at University of Malaya in 1974.
It must be said that the young and brash leader of the 1970s was then a champion of the poor at a time when government policy was very much in line with the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank. However, he had become a mature leader in the 1990s following his apprenticeship as the Finance Minister of Malaysia from 1995 to recognize the need to connect distributive justice with sound economic principles. In addition, in the spirit of intellectual discourse, Anwar had also developed the capacity to exchange views with experts from different schools of economic philosophy in a cordial and constructive manner. As a result, he enjoyed strong friendship with several heads of governments and global organizations.
Anwar remains a strong advocate of the humane economy as articulated in his Malaysian Economic Agenda and reflected in the 2008 Election Manifesto for Pakatan Rakyat, which he again stressed during his ceramahs and meet- the people- sessions during the campaign for the Permatang Pauh by-election. The fact that he won decisively over his UMNO opponent showed that his economic agenda founded on sound economic growth and distributive justice was fully endorsed by voters.
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Detained in 1966, formal proceedings taken against him included insisting that he was not a Singaporean citizen due to his inability to produce a birth certificate (a common occurrence, surely, in that era). This gave grounds for a Banishment Order until the government dropped that in favour of insisting that he was an advocate of violent terrorist acts and had links with the Communist Party of Malaysia. Before Chia, numerous other arrests had already been made. Chia himself became a Member of Parliament when he replaced an arrested colleague in Barisan Sosialis (leftist, yes, but still a far cry from CPM). All this for leading a 30-man march to Parliament in order to file a paper demanding that elections be held and that political prisoners be released unconditionally, apart from other less-than-spectacular acts of insurrection, of which the government had decided that all were apocalyptic omens for fledgling Singapore.
In 1985 he was promised freedom if he publicly disowned the Communist Party of Malaya (he was previously from the Barisan Sosialis, not the CPM). He refused on the grounds that he had never been associated with them in the first place. Chia would not be released until 1998 when he was fifty-seven years old. Undaunted after 32 years, he immediately released a press statement (he was barred from doing so before) asking for the repeal of the ISA, citing its wrongful use to detain political prisoners.
Now now, save the applause. This is a patently unbiased article, and therefore this writer shall save the best for last. We ought really to applaud the efficacy of the government for protecting us from the dangers posed by people like Chia, who unthinkingly speak their mind and march up to parliament instead of ambling past it on the way to a riverside dinner, weighed down with the many choices for a good repast.
If you are tempted to think that the government’s watchfulness has grown lax with the escape of truly terrifying terrorists such as Mat Selamat, think again. The excellent protection afforded by the seamless co-operation of the judiciary and the executive arms has ensured that anyone threatening the current stability of Singapore’s excellently tailored democratic system is hauled into court without even requiring the high-handedness of the ISA. The current approach is far more subtle—hauling such dissidents in and out of court on defamation and contempt of court charges. We have before us the cases of Chee Soon Juan, his sister Chee Siok Chin and most recently, Gopalan Nair. Nothing escapes the eye of our ever-watchful government. Even three citizens bearing “this is a kangaroo-court” t-shirts were inoculated, just in case people were inspired to go hopping mad and rage against the powers-that-be. We obviously have no kangaroo court here, as the proceedings taken against the three individuals were real—just as real as the millions earned from defamation lawsuits against every journal that has “nepotism,” “dictator” and You-Know-Who on the same page.
In conclusion, the Internal Security Act allows those of us who are eternally insecure to feel safer, as anyone wearing the wrong t-shirts, saying the wrong words, will be arrested and brought to trial with satisfactory results. We should certainly agree to continue allowing our taxpayer’s money to go towards running trials which prove to us that the government will go to great lengths to stay in power for our own good.
