Dr Mahatir Digs In

For a man who has survived 17 years in power and displayed remarkable sure-footedness throughout, Dr Mahatir Mohamad, the Prime…

For a man who has survived 17 years in power and displayed remarkable sure-footedness throughout, Dr Mahatir Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, has made a right mess of the last month. Hosting the Commonwealth Games was meant to signify that Malaysia had come of age - successful, modern, destined for greater things. Then, the crisis in Asia struck and spread like a virus. Malaysia's currency, the ringgit, tumbled. Funds flew out of the country and the stock market took a belting. Though it cast a great shadow on the games, little of it could be blamed directly on Dr Mahatir. But his decision to sack Mr Anwar Ibrahim, his deputy and heir apparent, a week before the games started, has proved to be the great own-goal of his premiership.

Instead of images flowing out from Kuala Lumpur to the rest of the world showing an efficient games hosted by a city at peace, the television stations showed huge but peaceful protests broken up by water cannon, tear gas and brutality. The pictures did not flow unimpeded. Government censors intercepted footage at a relay station; freedom of the media in Malaysia means freedom to support the government and nothing else. The censors even censored some coverage of the games; perhaps, one broadcaster jested, because Malaysia wasn't winning much.

Dr Mahatir is winning on the streets of Kuala Lumpur however. The brute force of the police aided by the draconian Internal Security Act (unlimited detention without trial) has curbed the protesters' fervour and secured Dr Mahatir's grip on power, for the moment. Mr Anwar and eleven of his colleagues are in detention. With a fine grasp of jurisprudence, Dr Mahatir has announced that Mr Anwar will be charged just as soon as the police have finished interrogating him.

Where this ends for Mr Anwar is anybody's guess but, in part, he brought about his present predicament. As Deputy Prime Minister, all he had to do was bide his time and 72-year-old Dr Mahatir would have passed on power eventually. But eventually was not going to be soon enough for Mr Anwar. Tiring of the Dauphin role, he took to criticising Dr Mahatir, especially on the economy. Dr Mahatir, for whom retirement is seemingly not in contemplation, decided that he could get along fine without an heir apparent and Mr Anwar was out of a job.

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Mr Anwar is also out of a future. Dr Mahatir accuses him of everything from treason to sodomy but he is unlikely to get a trial soon, or if he does, it is unlikely to be a fair one. Mr Anwar, with his modernising outlook and liberal credentials, has his admirers abroad, such as the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr John Howard, but he has precious little organised support at home and Dr Mahatir controls the media. The people who protested his sacking and arrest rallied mainly because of disgust with Dr Mahatir's authoritarianism, his crony capitalism and his tolerance of corruption. And it is mainly for those reasons that the Malaysian economy has caught the Asian flu while the person best suited to rectifying matters has been thrown into jail. Foreign investors and lenders to Malaysia will be distinctly unimpressed. Dr Mahatir has won this battle but he is clearly losing his grip. And in the deteriorating economy, he has a foe that could also bring about his downfall and one that cannot be conquered by brute force and repression.