In the wake of 9/11 and the attacks on the World Trade Center, the work of Malaysia’s ruling political elite, to keep the country on a moderate,
secular footing, became increasingly fraught. The emergence of an inter- national radical Islamist agenda, led by al Qaeda, brought the conflict between Mahathir’s secular Islamic state and its radicalized Muslim oppo- sition into heightened relief. This was heightened, more specifically, by the fact that key movers behind 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Moussawi and Hambali had Malaysian links and had made repeated visits to the region. Thus, rather than being attached to struggling parochial national- ist movements, the disillusioned and dispossessed threatened to unite behind an international Islamic Jihad with a media-savvy leadership at the head of effective suicide bombers.
However, the ruling political elite in Malaysia received a significant boost from America’s ‘war on terror’, although the details would not become clear until a 2005 US lobbying scandal involving Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
A US Senate Ethics Committee probe into the activities of Republican House leader Tom DeLay and his connection to Abramoffrevealed a secret meeting between Mahathir and Bush in May 2002, as Mahathir worked to shore up relations with Washington, soured by the jailing of his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, and Mahathir’s attacks on Jews. Before the 2002 meeting, more damage had been done by Mahathir’s criticism of Bush for his reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Details of the investigation by the Ethics Committee, published in The Washington Post, revealed how the US–
Malaysia Exchange Foundation (USMEA) and Hong Kong-based Belle Haven Consultants ‘spearheaded a US$1.4 million (S$2.3 million) lobby- ing campaign, using the platform of the (US-based, conservative policy think-tank) Heritage Foundation’, to ‘create a favorable climate for a con- troversial country through careful targeting of Washington elites’ (Edsall 2005).
At the time, USMEA was chaired by Tan Sri Megat Junid Megat Ayob, a Mahathir confidant and former minister. Its joint deputies were Datuk Jamaluddin Jarjis, then Malaysia’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, and retired US senator Malcolm Wallop. Hong Kong-based Belle Haven was a for-profit firm linked to the Malaysian government. Belle Haven paid four US lobbying groups a total of US$1.26 million over the two years that they were hired, and a heritage sponsored trip for Delay to visit Mahathir in Malaysia in August 2001, the upshot of which was the May 2002 meeting with Bush, seen as instrumental in repairing relations with Washington.
Open US criticism of the Muslim-dominated country became more muted after the arrest of more than 100 Islamic extremists with suspected terrorists links in Southeast Asia. In early 2004, KL was selected by the US as the home for a regional anti-terrorism centre, ‘testament to the
significant erosions in respect for international human rights norms since the September 11 attacks’ (Burton 26 May 2004).
The Bush administration even supported Malaysia’s use of the ISA to detain terrorist suspects without charge or trial, according to Human Rights Watch. This marked a dramatic turnaround in US policy, and a significant shift in position by the administration in Washington ending previous pressure for Malaysia to democratize symbolized in 1998 by Vice President Al Gore’s call for ‘Reformasi’ at the Asia Pacific Economic Co- operation (APEC) summit in Malaysia. Previously, the United States was extremely critical of ISA detentions and the use of what Gore described as
‘authoritarian rule’ in a time of economic crisis (Fuller 1998b). After the September 11 attacks on the United States, senior US officials praised the detentions and referred to Malaysia as a ‘beacon of stability’ (Human Rights Watch 2004b).
Human Rights Watch also suggested that the US government had benefited from human rights abuses by the Malaysian government. It highlighted the case of the so-called ‘Karachi 13’ when, in October 2003, US counterterrorism officials extensively interrogated Malaysian and Indonesian students detained in Karachi, Pakistan. Thirteen Malaysian students, some of whom were under 18, were detained in Karachi without charge for nearly two months before being returned to Kuala Lumpur. Five remained in detention in Malaysia under the Internal Security Act.
Human Rights Watch also detailed how the US practices at Guantanamo influenced the treatment of ISA detainees in Malaysia.
Malaysian officials regularly claimed that the abuses at Guantanamo gave them licence to engage in similar practices under ISA. At the same time, Malaysian interrogators used Guantanamo as a threat: detainees who refused to ‘cooperate’ with Malaysian security officials were told they could be transferred to US custody at Guantanamo. Sam Zarifi, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch said: ‘The Malaysian government uses Guantanamo as both a sword and a shield. Abuses by US authorities in the
“war on terror” afford cover to governments that abuse their own citizens’
(Human Rights Watch 2004b).
Meanwhile, the conflict with the international media continued as Mahathir played to the local audience. Before stepping down in 2004, he again attacked the western press for its coverage of the war in Iraq and the situation in the Muslim countries. The government sent 30 Malaysian jour- nalists to Iraq in April 2003, at its own expense, to counter ‘western propa- ganda’. Foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar said: ‘We don’t want to depend on the foreign media because their news reports are not based on neutral- ity’. The journalists were accompanied by representatives from several min- istries. The opposition press had to cope with additional harassment by
interior ministry agents who regularly put pressure on printers, distributors and advertisers.22
The ‘war on terror’ did not ease Malaysia’s relations with its neighbours, however. Malaysia joined Indonesia and New Zealand in criticizing Australia for threatening the sovereignty of its neighbours when it announced plans to closely monitor ships far beyond its territorial waters to boost the country’s defences against possible terror attacks on its soil and its offshore oil and gas facilities (Straits Times18 December 2004).
Relations with Indonesia and Thailand also soured. Warships from Malaysia and Indonesia had a confrontation, as tensions rose over a dis- puted oil-rich maritime area (Agence France Presse 12 April 2005).
Thailand also questioned its ASEAN neighbour for giving support to sep- aratist demands among the Muslim population of its southern states.
Malaysia was quick to deny involvement. Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said the government did not finance separatist movements or groups that use violence to achieve their ends after allegations that the Kelantan branch of Perkim had channelled funds to an outlawed separatist movement. Kelantan Umno liaison chief, Datuk Annuar Musa, had alleged that the Kelantan branch of the Malaysian Islamic Welfare Organization had given money from the sale of a timber concession to the Pattani United Liberation Organization movement (Pulo). He said the money was part of RM1.2 million in proceeds which had gone missing after Perkim Kelantan had sold the timber concession for RM2.4 million (New Straits Times9 December 2004).
On a more positive note, Mahathir’s successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, did move closer to good relations with Singapore after 2004.
During Mahathir’s long tenure, relations had always been somewhat strained. Both Umno and the PAP leadership in Singapore now found a common interest in promoting the moderate Islamic philosophy of Badawi’s Barisan Nasional (BN) Islam Hadhari (Civilizational Islam) which was contrasted with the ‘hard-line alternative’ of Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). Both governments suggested Badawi’s election victory in 2004 reflected the support of the majority of Malay-Muslim voters and a ‘complete route for PAS’ (Yeoh and Ming 2004).
Badawi was portrayed as a moderate in the style of Singapore’s Goh Chok Tong. Badawi struck a more moderate tone in economic development, freezing costly infrastructure projects, including a $US3.75 billion railway to be built by a Mahathir crony, launched an inquiry into police brutality and corruption, gave more authority to the bureaucrats and less to their
‘tainted political masters’, paid more attention to the rural communities and less to the wealthy urban elite, and even annulled Anwar’s sentence. As a result, the 2004 election victory was UMNO’s largest (Mallet 2005).
With the election secured, however, Badawi began a clamp down on what were described as extreme, ‘deviant’ groups (Lau, 6 April 2004), whilst the fight against corruption seemed to fade, and even the election victory was tarnished by allegations of vote-rigging and the shameless pro-government bias of the media. Indeed, Badawi appeared ‘caught in a party that is highly corrupt and factionalized . . . a system of authoritarian rule cloaked in democratic trappings and reliant for its legitimacy on perpetual economic growth’ (Mallet 2005). It was a system that continued to be locked in the politics of patronage and power.
Despite his moderate credentials, Badawi eventually followed the UMNO way on media control. The new prime minister moved his own people into positions of control at the mainstream media, most of which was still owned by supporters of the ruling party, while the most critical news outlet, the website Malaysiakini, endured an unresolved year-long police investigation (Aglionby 2004).
In 2005, the consolidation of local free-to-air television stations con- tinued under the ownership of Malaysia’s largest media corporation, Media Prima Bhd. In October of that year, Media Prima, a company linked to UMNO, completed its 100 per cent acquisition of the ntv7 Group. This also gave it control of the defunct WaFM radio station under the group. Media Prima also controlled the New Straits Timespublishing group as well as private television stations TV3, 8TV and the defunct Channel 9, which was expected to resume operations by 2005. By the end of 2005, Media Prima controlled approximately 48 per cent of Malaysia television viewership, with its closest rival the pay-television satellite oper- ator, Astro, enjoying a market share of roughly 20–30 per cent (Puah 2005).
Badawi, like Mahathir, was also prepared to silence those who spoke out against him. A Malaysian political science professor who frequently criti- cized government leaders and policies was sacked from the public univer- sity where he worked without being given a reason. Ramasamy Palanisamy, a minority ethnic Indian, who had worked at the government-funded National University of Malaysia for 25 years, said he was victimized for being outspoken: ‘I speculate that my public role in writing and speaking on political and social issues, such as the lack of democratic space [and] the plight of the Indian community, led to the dismissal’ (Associated Press 5 August 2005).
At the same time, the shift to Badawi caused intra-elite tensions that had media consequences. Mahathir continued to wield his influence behind the scenes, as a battle of words continued to rage between the former Prime Minister and the international press. He also accused the foreign media of continuing to ‘hate’ him, in the wake of an AWSJ report which suggested,
after the resignation of Proton’s chairman when Mahathir reportedly blocked the removal of the company’s CEO, ‘the Proton flap shows how the strong-willed Tun Dr Mahathir continues to wield influence on Malaysia’s political and corporate landscape’, and how he caused ‘headaches’ for his successor. Similar comments were made in the Financial Times (Ahmad 2005).
UMNO leaders rushed to scorn an Economistarticle critical of Mahathir (Yeoh 2003), and BusinessWeek was also forced to apologize to Dr Mahathir after he accused it of sending him a threatening letter – the apology came from managing editor Robert Dowling. Mahathir said he received a letter asking him for an interview and giving him less than 48 hours to respond, threatening to write about cronyism, oppression and dic- tatorship if he refused (Agence France Presse 18 September 2003).
In these circumstances, Malaysia’s difficult relationship with the mass media and communications technology continued. Approximately 6.5 million people in Malaysia used text messaging services, which generate about one billion ringgit ($US263 million) in revenue for telecoms compa- nies as of 2003 according to IDC Pacific, and were increasingly used by the marketing industry. Having seen the enthusiasm with which people vote in TV talent competitions, Malaysia’s science minister, Jamaluddin Jarjis, offered Malaysians the chance to vote by mobile phone short-messaging service (sms) to choose the country’s first astronaut (Kent 2005), yet Malaysia’s influential national Fatwa Council put the domestic marketing industry into a spin with a ruling that taking part in sms contests was a sin.
The contests it said were akin to gambling, which is a sin in Islamic law (Prystay 2004a).
The UMNO leadership, itself, was sending confused messages. A Toyota Altis advertisement featuring Hollywood star Brad Pitt was banned citing that the use of western faces in advertisement would create an inferiority complex among Asians. Deputy information Minister Zainuddin Maidin argued: ‘Why do we need to use their faces in our advertisements, are our own people not handsome? We barred the advertisement as it appeared as a humiliation against Asians’ (Asian Media and Communication Bulletin November–December 2002, p. 16).
But, when Kelantan Menteri Besar Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat blamed the print and electronic media for the increase in the country’s crime rate, sug- gesting negative reporting contributed to the moral decay among youths, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi added his voice to women’s groups and NGOs saying society should be the one to decide whether the media had played their role well, adding there was no need for any party to blame the media for writing and publishing the truth: ‘The role of the media is to disseminate news and information to the masses. In the process,
they would have to follow the stipulated guidelines and regulations gov- erning their work – I personally do not think the media have brought about negative effects to the society’.23
Much was also made by the Malaysian government of plans to relax guidelines for film censorship to keep up with the times. In particular, a new
‘PG13’ rating was suggested to allow children of that age to watch the films if accompanied by their parents or adult guardians. While the local film industry and moviegoers who have long regarded the country’s film cen- sorship codes, in use since 1963, as being too restrictive, viewed this as a good thing, the government still sought to maintain control over content, albeit indirectly, by providing guidance to local-film makers at a ‘meeting of minds’ between the government and representatives of the industry. The ministry’s film control division secretary, Abdul Aziz Yusak, said the new guidelines would allow film-makers flexibility, with fewer restrictions, as long as they use themes consistent and acceptable in multi-racial Malaysia with regard to race and religion (Samad 2005).
Thus, it was clear that despite being seen, initially, as a more liberal, reformist leader, Badawi has continued the media policies of control which were the hallmark of the Mahathir era. These policies have, however, been embraced in the context of growing inter-elite tensions, encouraged by Mahathir suffering from what Musa Hitam termed the ‘post prime- minister syndrome’ (Jaafar and Muhammad 2006), and the complicated network of interlinking relationships created by the long-term Malaysian leader in the political culture of patronage.
CONCLUSION
While the Mahathir government was clearly conscious of playing to a local audience with its attacks on the international media, the flow of information into the country accompanying the process of globalization and technological change was perceived by the government as a threat to state and regime security. This was particularly clear during the political crisis associated with the downfall of Anwar, itself symbolic of the inter- nal struggle within the ruling UMNO party, as the Asian Financial Crisis undermined the legitimacy of the developmental state model. All the while, the ruling elite watched as Indonesia underwent regime change, amidst concerns of a possible regional contagion of instability (Ayoob 1995, p. 196).
Yet, the control structures put in place by the government seemed to have been effective in the case of CNBC Asia. The increasing sensitivity of these large media organizations to commercial imperatives played into the hands
of governments, like that of Malaysia, concerned to maintain control of at least the content, if not the flow, of information across their borders.
Indeed, Mahathir and UMNO have proved remarkably resilient even as the government’s grip seemed to be slipping in other areas of new technology, and the Internet, in particular, had become a space in which challenges to the government were mounted, threatening to corrode central control (Phar 2000, p. 49).
But while liberal theorists would suggest the changes wrought by glob- alization should bring about the breakdown of the illiberal state, this has not happened in Malaysia. Mahathir and his successor, Badawi, at the head of UMNO, have been fairly successful in managing the new media envi- ronment through both the trying circumstances of the Asian Financial Crisis and with technological developments threatening their monopoly of the mass communications industry. Malaysia’s hegemony in its own national culture and communications system might falter, but it is ques- tionable whether the loss of national cohesion and identity need result (Collins 1995, p. 181).
Indeed, pressures to liberalize the media and Malaysia’s politics from the international arena have diminished in the face of the threat posed by radical Islam. Western leaders no longer call for reformasi. In the search for support in the ‘war on terror’ rather stability and secularism, even if it means autocratic illiberal government, is once more the rallying cry. Should the issue of human rights be raised in criticism, Malaysians can point to American policies to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, which has undermined any coherent western vision for a free media and a plural state in the eyes of many in Southeast Asia.
Of course, Malaysia is not alone in experiencing the rending tremors caused by the rapidly accelerating forces of change that accompany glob- alization and technological development. Similar parallels can be found around the region, as governments fight to maintain their grip over the flow of information they deem a risk to the security of state and regime. In the ebb and flow of the battle between the ancienne regimes and the forces for reform, however, even local voices which were raised against corruption and cronyism seem to have been silenced in the desire for political and eco- nomic stability in the face of rising Islamic fundamentalism.
But, in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, across ASEAN there was a similar to and fro, as governments attempted to re-assert their control policies as the mass media and information and entertainment sources tried to stretch previously claustrophobic borders. In the next chapter we will examine how the political culture and history of the Philippines has seen the development of a very different media model. It is also a model which the traditional political elites find uncomfortable.
NOTES
1. See Gomez and Jomo (1997, p. 2), and Wong (2000, p. 118).
2. See http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.
3. Karthigesu (1998, p. 36) and Wong (2000, p. 127).
4. Gomez and Jomo (1997) and Wong (2000, pp. 115–37).
5. See Atkins, Rodan, Wong, et al.
6. See Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 September, 1999, 162: 38, various articles: ‘Hiebert Imprisoned for Contempt of Court’, p. 17, ‘The article that landed Hiebert in Jail’, p. 18, and ‘The trial judges point of view’, p. 19.
7. Presentation by Keane Wong at The Media and Democratization in the Asia-Pacific, International Conference, Sydney, February, 2000.
8. See Nuttall (1998), Chen (1999) and Hiebert (1998).
9. http://www.parti-pas.org/harakah.
10. http://www.malaysia.net/dap.
11. See Ibrahim and Kaur (1998).
12. See Reuters 9 October, 1998.
13. See Karthigesu (1998, p. 36) and Wong (2000, p. 76).
14. http://www.cnbcasia.com.sg/aboutcnbcasia/aboutcnbcasia.htm.
15. The details were recorded by the author, then Senior News Editor at CNBC Asia.
16. Fuller (1998a).
17. A release from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) on 6 October, 1998, explained that the matter had been discussed between senior CID officers and the RMP assured the SPF that ‘they recognise the longstanding practice of keeping each other informed of such interviews so as to avoid such actions being misconstrued as the exercise of police powers of investigation outside of jurisdiction. They added that such an incident would not happen again.’
18. There are a number of examples from wire stories at the time, including Ueno (1998), Reuters (20 October 1998), Agence France Presse (24 November 1998), and Reuters (19 April 1999).
19. For example, Kadir (1998) and Khan (1998, p. 13).
20. CNBC, Asia in Crisis, broadcast 6 and 7 October, 1998.
21. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, was speaking in an interview with the author on the Malaysia island of Langkawi on 12 August, 2000.
22. See RSF Malaysia 2004 Annual Report, http://www.rsf.org/article.php 3?id_article=
10201.
23. Quoted in The Sunday Star(2005) and Lau (13 May 2004, p. A1).