[Dalam perenggan terakhir, FEER membuat kesimpulan bahawa

"In the end, Mahathir will be judged as a great Asian leader."

Tetapi kita merasa lebih elok jika dibaca

"In the end, Mahathir will be judged as a great sick Asian leader"

Great man never falls. Prestasi Mahathir kini bukan sahaja merosot di mata rakyat sahaja, malah orang Umno sendiri sudah muak dan membenci beliau. Jika tidak Umno tidak akan tewas di Terengganu dan BN akan menang di Lunas. Ramai orang berbaju Umno tetapi mereka sudah tidak lagi mengundi Umno. Mahathir nampak popular kerana semua akhbar dan media utama telah dikongkong supaya mengapung dan menjilatnya. Tanpa itu semua dia sudah lama tinggal di rumah orang tua yang gila, jika dia tidak tersumbat di penjara. - WP]

From The Far Eastern Economic Review
Issue cover-dated 11th January 2001

MAHATHIR: DECLINING POWERS

By Michael Vatikiotis/HONG KONG

Mahathir Mohamad has already entered the history books as the world's longest-serving elected prime minister. Until quite recently, many Malaysians worried how the country would survive without his blend of motivational boosterism and tough talk on the world stage. But today, even members of his own party wouldn't mind if the 75-year-old leader bowed out. "He must be the only party leader I know who is a liability to his party," says Shahrir Samad, a fiercely independent-minded supreme-council member of Mahathir's ruling party.

Mahathir, like China's President Jiang Zemin (see article on page 19), gives the impression that he's trying to cement his legacy in the twilight of his long tenure. But in some ways, he isn't up to meeting the immediate challenges facing his country.

Mahathir, in power since 1981, has himself admitted that he may have contributed to the ruling United Malays National Organization's loss in a November 29 state by-election. But the medical-doctor-turned-politician isn't one to change his ways. His approach to leading Malaysia has been to browbeat, cajole and, if necessary, persecute those who don't share his vision of progress and development.

There have been some spectacular results: witness the rapidly changing Kuala Lumpur skyline and the economic boom of the 1990s. There have been what some might call needless stunts--Malaysians sent to the South Pole, up Mount Everest, and deep into Africa in search of an elusive economic nexus with the developing world. There have also been some darker moments at home--such as Mahathir's battle with judges after they ruled in favour of a political opponent in the late 1980s, and his crackdown on the press in the same period. Going against the regional trend toward political pluralism, Mahathir still lashes out at the media and supports the use of stringent civil laws against political opponents.

In 1998, his falling-out with his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, divided the country and undermined support for his party. Anwar's sacking was perhaps understandable, given the impatience of his supporters to unseat Mahathir. But Anwar's allies charge that the way he was treated by the authorities amounted to an abuse of human rights. Many Malaysians agreed and voted with their feet at the last election, significantly reducing Mahathir's parliamentary majority.

Mahathir has forged modern Malaysia in the image of his own beliefs and in the process altered the political landscape. He duelled with traditional rulers over their state rights and in the process weakened Malaysia's federal system. His contempt for untrammelled freedom of the press has cowed the country's media. His anti-Western rhetoric has painted him, and therefore to some extent his country, as leery of joining the global community. Some economists judge that he may have saved Malaysia from the worst of the 1997 regional economic crisis by fixing the exchange rate, but longer-term he may have damaged Malaysia's free-market credentials.

In the end, Mahathir will be judged as a great* Asian leader. But his legacy will be coloured by his uncompromising political views and the way that he recast Malaysia's democratic institutions in a more authoritarian mould. This explains why many Malaysians, when asked about his successor, often quietly hope that the next prime minister will be a quieter, even duller, figure.

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