How do you respond to critics who say you’re building a palace fit for a pharaoh? They can call me a pharaoh if they like. It’s not for me. I won’t be around much longer. It’s the residence of the prime minister, not Dr. Mahathir the pharaoh.
Do you see this election as the fight of your political life? Not necessarily. I’ve had to face some difficult elections. In 1990, one fourth of my cabinet left with the man who challenged me for the presidency of the party [and lost].
You’ve said support for Anwar was really support for you. Do you still believe that? I’m learning quite a few things. That while he was close to me, and making use of my support to gain popularity, he was building up personal loyalties. Now I’m discovering government officers, business people, party members. He cultivated them by giving them some privileges, some perks and all that. Before this, I wasn’t really interested. I thought that by 1998, I would stop, step down. I didn’t see any point in going on. But, of course, the economy went bad, then I discovered these things.
You’ve dismissed pro-Anwar protesters as “ingrates, hippy people, beer drinkers.” Is there nothing you can learn from the “reformasi” movement? I found it difficult to believe that [Anwar] is not what he makes himself out to be. If it is difficult for me to believe that he is not pious, it is even more difficult for his followers. But demonstration is not characteristic of Malaysians. Malaysians generally are not violent. So he had to resort to getting schoolchildren, to getting university students and also some thugs involved. I saw a picture of them, you know? A picture of them, you know, they were carrying beer bottles. Obviously they had been drinking. This is taken by the press, not by me. These are the kind of people who protest. You pay them a few cents, they’re quite happy to demonstrate. Some of those people confess that they have been paid.
How do you respond to Malays who say it’s “un-Malay” to humiliate a public official in this way? It is part of the Islamic religion that you don’t humiliate them. But I have been forced into a position of either humiliating a friend, a single person or letting the whole country be humiliated. If this country is led by a man who, later on, we discover is a homosexual and all that, it would bring shame to the whole country. There’s no conspiracy. I wanted to hand power over to him. I’m now 74. I didn’t want to be saddled to this desk for the rest of my years.
Many Malaysians fear that if it can happen to Anwar, it can happen to them. It has happened only to Anwar. Before, it happened to other ministers. At that stage, if you had asked me if the courts were biased I would have agreed. But it is biased against the government. Recently ministers and chief ministers who have been investigated have all been from my party.
Are you concerned that your antiforeign rhetoric gives Malaysia the wrong image? You know we were building the economy of this country; we were succeeding very well. We were growing at 8 percent every year. It’s been hard work. Somebody comes along and just smashes everything to pieces and I’m expected to keep quiet and not say anything? Who are they? I mention the people. They just happen to be Europeans and Americans. I say it. That doesn’t mean I’m anti-American. If we had gone under, and the IMF takes over, we would have lost our independence. The IMF approach is to take over control of the economy. That, to me, is colonialism. You see, when you take over the economy, you must eventually take over the politics. This is what happened to neighboring countries. As you know, when the economy went down, they had to change their leaders, change their system.
You’re referring to Indonesia? That is your guess, not mine. But you can see, here is [IMF chief Michel] Camdessus, standing up over the president of 250 million people. To me that is very humiliating. I will not stand for Camdessus standing there while I sign away my authority.
Was IMF reform a threat to the New Economic Policy [an affirmative-action program for Malays]? Yes. When they start saying you must have no discrimination, you must do away with subsidies, you must not help anybody to come up, then all this work that we have done to give indigenous people a share will be undone. In fact, it is undone. Most of them have now collapsed. The IMF and currency traders have done all that. Am I supposed to be thankful? Others cannot say it because they borrow from the IMF. Their mouths are shut. They have no freedom.
In practice, aren’t you doing what IMF- supported countries are doing? What the IMF asked us to do, to squeeze credit, that we don’t do. My deputy [Anwar] followed the IMF. He increased interest rates, and we went almost bankrupt. On top of that, he cut back on government expenditure by 21 percent. Since 80 percent of our expenditures are for operations, and 20 for development, that means there will be no development. But he does these things because he’s told this is the way to do it.
Don’t your restructuring agencies mirror those in IMF countries? We learned all this from the Swedes, not from the IMF.
Are your capital controls a model for Asia? It can be, but most [countries] are not in a strong-enough position. We were very strong financially. We had $20 billion in reserves. But currency controls are something that people should think about as a solution to a very unstable situation. Knowing what the exchange rate is makes it easy for people to budget. Businessmen are making profits. They tell me, “You saved my life.” We can keep these control on indefinitely.
You’ve written that Japanese occupiers were more brutal than the British, but you seem more angry at the British. Why? Under the British we didn’t suffer in terms of oppression, but they looked down upon us. The [Malay] sultan was not allowed into a British club, the Lake Club in Kuala Lumpur. That kind of thing I believe is much more not only humilating, but oppressive. So that is my feeling about the British. I must say that they did a good job, too. They left us with an administrative machinery which we could use and improve upon. But after independence the Japanese were more forthcoming in bringing in investment and technology. So if the Japanese are nice today I say they are nice.
Have you laid down rules to prevent your children from being attacked for corruption, as former Indonesian president Suharto’s children are? In Indonesia, it is their way of life. It is natural for them to take bribes, for example. Everything can be arranged. Here it has never been like that. I prevented my children from doing so many businesses that at one point they got fed up with me and said, “We can’t do anything because you say no to this and no to that.” Take a comparison between Pertamina and Petronas [Indonesia’s national petrol company versus Malaysia’s]. Not a single member of my family has any business with Petronas. Of course no one will believe us. Because, well, they say all these people are corrupt.
Will slower growth create political problems, by making it difficult to create “Malay millionaires”? It is not just making millionaires. You have to have bumiputras [Malay sons of the soil] at every level. If you have Chinese millionaires you must have bumiputras. If bumiputras are only selling cakes by the roadside that is not good enough. If there is a Chinese middle class then there must be a bumi middle class. We will find a way around it [slower growth]. Despite our economy going down, you don’t see Malays fighting Chinese in this country. In 1969, Malays came out to burn houses and cars on the street, absolutely certain that the houses and the vehicles they burned belonged to the Chinese. Today if they burn the cities, they would be burning their own houses and cars. So they don’t do that anymore.They have a stake. That is our belief and we work toward it.
