3 hari terakhir bersama Dr. Mahathir

Mahathir milestones

Major milestones in the life of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who retires Friday after 22 years as Malaysia's prime minister:

1925: Born on Dec 20, the youngest of 10 children of an immigrant schoolteacher father of Indian descent and a Malay mother.

1953: Graduates as a medical doctor at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore and returns to the then-British colony of Malaya to work as a government medical officer before going into private practice.

1964: Enters politics (Malaysia gained independence in 1957) as a member of parliament for the United Malays National Organisation (Umno).

1969: Expelled from the party after criticising premier Tunku Abdul Rahman for failing to stand up for ethnic Malays in the face of economic dominance by the ethnic Chinese minority.

1970: Writes "The Malay Dilemma", criticising Malays for failing to progress.

1972: Rejoins Umno after being rehabilitated when Tunku resigns.

1974: Elected as member of parliament again and begins rapid rise through the ranks, holding several ministerial posts.

1978: Becomes deputy president of Umno.

1981: Takes over as Malaysia's fourth prime minister.

1982: Introduces the "Look East" policy, turning to Japan as an economic role model.

1985: Malaysia sinks into recession. Mahathir imposes fiscal austerity measures and relaxes affirmative-action laws favouring Malays.

1986: Mahathir's first deputy Musa Hitam resigns due to personal conflict.

1987: Mahathir narrowly fends off a challenge for Umno presidency in April from his then-trade minister Razaleigh Hamzah.

1987: Government swoops on the opposition in October, detaining more than 100 people and suspending three newspapers, to curb a rise in racial tension over the issue of Chinese education.

1988: Cracks down on the judiciary after the high court supports a petition by his opponents within Umno. The country's top judge is sacked.

1989: Mahathir undergoes heart bypass operation.

1991: Outlines his "Vision 2020" plan to make Malaysia a developed nation by that year.

1993: Strips the country's monarchs of their legal immunity from prosecution after a state sultan allegedly beat up a field hockey coach in his palace.

1994: Slaps a seven-month ban on awarding of government contracts to British firms in protest at British media claims that his government was corrupt.

1997: Hosts a summit of Asean leaders. Despite western protests over Burmar's human rights record, he backs Rangoon's entry into Asean to mark the grouping's 30th anniversary.

1998: Imposes capital controls and pegs the ringgit at 3.80 to the dollar as the economy plunges into recession due to the Asian financial crisis.

1998: Sacks his deputy and finance minister Anwar Ibrahim on grounds of sexual immorality. Anwar was later tried and sentenced to a total 15 years in jail for abuse of power and sodomy.

2002: Announces his unexpected resignation in an emotional speech at Umno's general assembly in June. He later makes plans to step down by October 2003, and endorses his deputy Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as his successor.

2003: Hosts summits of the Non-Aligned Movement in February and the Organisation of Islamic Conference in October ahead of his retirement. - AFP

Never mind the talk, Mahathir's legacy is Muslim democracy

Malaysia's leader has succeeded with a difficult balancing act, write Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington.

Mahathir Mohamad is retiring as Prime Minister of Malaysia. Retiring, not fleeing in disgrace, not moving to Saudi Arabia to hide from international law, not avoiding a looming corruption scandal, not forced out by street protests, and not facing a firing squad.

As leadership changes in developing nations go, the hand-over to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is as good as it gets. Mahathir is not seeking immunity from prosecution from his successor, will not be waging a guerilla war against the forces of liberation, and uncertainty about Malaysia's future has not upset the financial markets.

We can, unfortunately however, look forward to hearing him continue to speak out on international affairs, including the many apparent shortcomings of Australia and its leaders. Nevertheless despite his race-baiting, we should listen.

Unfashionable as it may be to say, Mahathir has been the greatest leader of any developing country since the postwar independence movement began. In truth, he doesn't have a lot of competition, given the rogues' gallery of genocidal dictators that has populated the Third World in that time. All the more reason to pause and reflect upon the good, with the bad, in Mahathir.

Malaysia is on track to become a prosperous, multicultural democracy. In the Islamic world, in particular, this is an unheard-of trifecta. Elsewhere in South-East Asia we see poverty, civil war and dictatorship. Malaysia's is a mighty achievement of peaceful economic and social development in a volatile region.

In spite of the Asian financial crisis, during which Mahathir alienated polite opinion by rejecting the advice of the IMF, Malaysia's economy is in reasonable shape. It has been a remarkable transformation.

In their divide and rule style, the British colonists left a poisonous legacy of racial division in Malaysia. The majority Malays ran the bureaucracy and the Chinese were dominant in commerce and mining, while Indian immigrants provided the labour on rubber plantations. The early years of independence were marked by ethnic tension, culminating in riots after the 1969 federal elections.

Contrary to the accepted view in Western societies, Mahathir has sought to overcome this division by dealing head-on with the differences between ethnic groups. His 1969 book, The Malay Dilemma, castigated his fellow Malays for their poor work habits in comparison with the industrious Chinese minority.

As Prime Minister he continued to lecture his fellow Muslims, while giving them a leg-up with a program of preferential educational and employment opportunities.

There was more than an echo of this approach to development in Mahathir's much castigated but little-read speech to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference this month.

In between the disgraceful anti-Semitic rhetoric came a passionate call for a modernising Islam, a peaceful civilisation that respects the pursuit of knowledge, trade and technology. The path of modernisation, he argued, would be much more successful in guaranteeing the security of the Muslim world than resorting to violence.

Of course, with Mahathir still far from impressed with the diligence of his fellow Malays after 30 years of his haranguing, we shouldn't expect miracles in response to the goading of his fellow Islamic rulers. But Mahathir has been the model of a moderate Islamic leader, wrestling with the forces of Western-dominated globalisation on one side, and the cave-dwelling bin Laden wannabes on the other.

This balancing act is an enormously difficult task for a political leader. Mahathir's anti-Western and anti-Semitic tirades are aimed at building a sense of nationalism in an ethnically diverse state. Malaysians are proud hosts of the world's tallest buildings and revelled in the spotlight of the Commonwealth Games. In the minds of voters, Mahathir's nationalism compensates for his less popular policies, such as his criticism of theocratic politics and the ethnic Chinese resentment of racial preferences.

The path of Islamic modernisation is a balancing act that Western nations should encourage. The only alternative is to continue to cultivate pro-Western regimes that don't rely on popular support. That is a short-term solution. All dictators fall on their sword eventually, and the result is usually more turmoil rather than less.

This is a lesson that we should have learnt after the collapse of the Soeharto regime in Indonesia, and again when the pro-Western Saudi Arabia and Egypt produced the bulk of the September 11 terrorists. Moderate Muslim governments, not Western belligerence, will win the war on terrorism.

The prickly relationship that all contemporary Australian prime ministers have endured with Mahathir is curious in light of the 30-year lovefest our leaders enjoyed with Soeharto. He was responsible for the deaths of as many as a million Indonesians and left a legacy of militarism, social division and an economy in smoking ruins. And we wonder why Indonesia's President Megawati Soekarnoputri continually snubs Australia - our once friend Soeharto deposed her father in a coup. Such is the morality of international affairs that our leaders threw barbs at Mahathir while toasting Soeharto.

Putting aside the shocking treatment of Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian Government's treatment of its opposition is positively respectful in comparison with its neighbours where torture, exile, repression and civil war have been the norm. Opposition parties do win elections in some states. And it's not a pretty sight. PAS, the Islamic party, is held back from implementing a brutal form of sharia law in the states it controls, Kelantan and Terengganu, by only the strictures of the federal constitution.

Condemn his racist words, by all means, but remember that Mahathir's Malaysia is the most successful model of a modern Muslim nation that the world has to offer.

Peter van Onselen teaches in the Master of International Relations at UNSW.

Wayne Errington recently completed a PhD on South-East Asian