A 'Nice Man' Finishes First
	The Prime Minister beats the odds against a serious challenge
	By James Walsh

Originally published November 5, 1990
When he felt the onset of a heart attack early last year, Mahathir Mohamad took the crisis in hand. A physician by training, he recognized the signs and drove himself at once to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital. Malaysia's durable Prime Minister emerged from a subsequent coronary-bypass operation looking a bit drawn and frail. If opponents thought he was ripe for a political coup de grace, however, Mahathir showed last week what his take-charge instincts can do. In the most closely fought election in Malaysian history, his ruling & National Front beat the odds to win a conclusive 70.6% of the seats in Parliament.

That a coalition that has dominated the country for 33 years would win again had been a foregone conclusion. That it would win such a lopsided victory had not. For the first time since independence from Britain in 1957, Southeast Asia's most racially mixed nation featured a challenger who also embraced Malaysia's main ethnic communities: Malay, Chinese and Indian. He was, moreover, a figure of high standing among Malays. Razaleigh Hamzah, a hereditary prince and onetime national Finance Minister, stitched together an unlikely combination of factions ranging from fervent would-be Islamizers of the state to a leftist Chinese-based party opposed to Muslim-Malay domination. Razaleigh's agenda: reduce the Front's parliamentary strength, discredit Mahathir and ultimately displace him.

The suave challenger did succeed in diluting the Front's legislative complement somewhat and held it to a popular majority of only 52%: the lowest since 1969's vicious race riots. When the dust cleared, though, the ruling alliance and its linchpin, Mahathir's United Malays National Organization, had taken 127 out of 180 legislative seats. Just 49 had gone to Razaleigh's bloc, leaving the Front with its symbolically crucial two-thirds share and then some. Not only did Mahathir retain enough seats to approve constitutional amendments; his triumph was so convincing as to torpedo Razaleigh's efforts to form a credible alternative.

For a dramatically industrializing and prospering nation, that attempt to establish a politics of choice was a major issue. "The opposition parties for once didn't oppose each other, and that was a big step forward for them," said Harold Crouch, a political science lecturer at the National University of Malaysia. "But they didn't follow through by working for candidates from other opposition parties." Whether rubber tapper or electronics tycoon, the average voter probably saw the election as simply a battle of personalities: an outgrowth of Razaleigh's narrowly missed 1987 bid to unseat Mahathir from the U.M.N.O. presidency. As such, it was the cool, blue-blooded consensus leader vs. the combative incumbent who likes to tweak the Establishment and defy the West.

In his nine years as Prime Minister, Mahathir has bent a series of independent institutions to his will, taking on British companies, the judiciary and even, in his most sensitive tangle, Malaysia's hereditary sultans, who rotate the constitutional kingship among themselves. With a fresh five-year term ahead, he stands to become the longest-serving head of government in his country's history.

Mahathir credited the victory to his guidance of a successful economy, today at a pace-setting growth rate of 9%. As one opposition supporter saw it, though, the old trio of money, media and party machinery was what turned the trick. If a team of Commonwealth poll observers acquitted the voting as mostly free and fair, the 10-day campaign did not fare so well. Newspaper and broadcast coverage was powerfully pro-Mahathir, and fear-mongering figured in it too.

First, Mahathir called "a stab in the back" the defection by the Christian-based ruling party of Sabah, an East Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. When Razaleigh appeared sporting a Sabah hat, newspapers splashed the picture. Mahathir supporters whispered that the hat displayed a cross, implying that Razaleigh was prepared to betray Islam. "No politician should stoop that low," said Chandra Muzaffar, a Penang human-rights activist. But in a TIME interview, Mahathir denied having used scare tactics. Besides, he charged, Sabah leaders got in there first by taking "a very distinctly anti- Muslim stand."

In general, Mahathir told TIME, Malaysia's race relations are "reasonably good" compared with those in many strife-riven lands, including some in newly liberated Eastern Europe. But a man who summarily jailed 107 opponents in 1987 on charges of inciting turmoil darkly declared that "we cannot hold back anymore" on prosecuting "certain political leaders." He also suggested that racial antagonism will never be overcome until the commercially dominant ethnic Chinese assimilate to Malay life and language.

To loosen Chinese control of the nation's wealth, Malaysia in 1970 proclaimed its New Economic Policy, an affirmative-action scheme favoring Malays for loans and schooling privileges. With the NEP due to expire at year's end, Mahathir hinted that it would be renewed in a modified way. Malays, he stressed, still need "strength to stand on their own." He compared them to golfers: "If you play against the champions without a handicap, you are nowhere . . . On the other hand, there is a danger of the Malays becoming too dependent. We are now trying to orient them toward a more competitive society."

Mahathir continues to flout Western critics of Malaysia's human-rights and environmental records. As for destroying the rain forests, he said, no one mentions deforestation in Europe and America, whereas tropical trees "grow so fast that if we forgot to cut them down, the whole of Kuala Lumpur would turn to forest in two years." What of his future? He is inclined to retire after this term, Mahathir said, but remains "at the service of the party." And perhaps the press favors him today, he added, because it has found him out. "I'm a very nice man, really," he said. "I've always been a very shy person who doesn't like meeting with people. But I have to force myself. It has been a strain."

—Reported by Jay Branegan/Kuala Lumpur

	Mahathir's Exit Strategy [July 05, 2002] If Malaysia's Prime Minister does step down as planned, the era of the Asian strongman will end It's My Party... [June 26, 2002] Malaysian PM resigns, breaks down, and is re-installed in a bizarre televised address Malaysia's Chosen One [June 21, 2002] Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary has become a leading tycoon. Is it because of his friendship with Malaysia's Prime Minister? Just What Dr. M Ordered [October 22, 2001] The war against terror yields unexpected benefits for the Malaysian Prime Minister—at home and abroad Malaysia Under Mahathir [July 17, 2001] TIME's Simon Elegant on the 20-year rule of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine