Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain (best novels to read in english TXT) 📗

them that nothing came easy, and there was no shortcut to success. The fast track to corporal punishment was to lie, steal or commit another of the offences that were not tolerated. Dr. Mahathir got out the cane and, with the other children assembled to absorb the lesson, administered the requisite number of whacks to the offender's backside.[56] Although the girls escaped the cane, Marina recalled being soundly spanked when small for poking out her tongue at the gardener.[57]

From the backblocks of Malaysia, the children learned about the wider world from their father. Marina was not allowed to have pen pals from South Africa or Israel because of apartheid and the Palestinian cause. Twice, an American teenager stayed with the family for a couple of months under a student exchange programme, which Dr. Mahathir "was really into", as Mukhriz Mahathir put it. The parents lost some of their enthusiasm, though, after Marina, at 16, returned from three months in California "quite influenced by the American way of life", in her mother's words. Marina had become "very forward, argumentative", Dr. Siti Hasmah said.[58] Marina later became a journalist, newspaper columnist and social activist, heading the non-governmental Malaysian AIDS Council for ten years.

Indulging an entrepreneurial streak that had been with him since childhood, Dr. Mahathir invested in various businesses. In primary school, he had peddled balloons to earn pocket money, buying them at two cents for three and selling them at two cents each. If he inherited the business bug, it surely came from his mother. Wan Tempawan had been resourceful in contributing to the family budget. She rented space under the house to itinerant hawkers, who slept there and moved around selling their wares during the day. She also grew jasmine, which the children collected and threaded on string made from dried grass, fashioning garlands for sale.[59] Mohamad Iskandar's only foray into business, on the other hand, had flopped. Against his youngest son's advice, he sold fruit-producing land to buy two trishaws, which he rented out. "We never saw the rent or the trishaws again," said Dr. Mahathir.[60]

Dr. Mahathir went into property development, tin mining, a franchised petrol station and a shop to do quick printing — sometimes to rescue Malay businessmen in financial trouble — though not all his ventures were profitable. Dr. Mahathir recalled that before the war there had been only two Malay shops in the whole of Alor Star.[61] He helped found the Malay Chamber of Commerce and later served as a director. "Mahathir was an inspiration," said locally-born Jaafar Ismail, who in 2007 was the executive director, infrastructure, of an Australian-listed international investment fund and asset management group. I saw business as a thing to do."[62]

One of Dr. Mahathir's noteworthy investments began with his pitch to a sales representative, who distributed pharmaceuticals to doctors, to quit his Penang-based agency and join Dr. Mahathir in forming a rival company. Dr. Mahathir, with 30 per cent of the equity, was one of eight shareholders when MICO Farmasi Sdn. Bhd. was incorporated in 1964. He organized the financial side while the former salesman put together the management team and ran the company. It was called MICO, at Dr. Mahathir's suggestion, for Malaysian Indian Chinese Organization, because the owners were drawn from all three ethnic groups. In addition to distributing drugs wholesale throughout Kedah and Perlis states, the company operated a retail pharmacy in Alor Star. In 2008, 44 years later, MICO was humming along with a staff of ten, its original family shareholder structure still in place, including Dr. Mahathir's stake. The managing director was Haja Nasrudeen Abdul Kareem, 46, the physician son of the salesman-founder, who had taken over upon his father's death in 1992.[63]

While Dr. Mahathir told friends he was trying to make money to launch his political bid, he did not hesitate to flaunt his wealth. He bought one of the biggest and most imposing automobiles ever produced by Detroit, a blue Pontiac. His later explanation that he acquired the car from a friend, who was the agent, because he was having trouble selling the Pontiac and offered it cheap — "only 12,000" dollars — and on installments, was only part of the story. At a time when most people in Alor Star walked or pedaled bicycles along dusty streets lined with low wooden buildings and everyone knew who owned which car, Dr. Mahathir was making a statement: It was symbol of his aspiration to prove the capabilities of the Malays", as one admirer saw.[64] Most immediately, it was a declaration that the boy from the wrong side of the tracks had arrived. "Maybe there's some element also of that," Dr. Mahathir conceded.

In case anyone missed the point, Dr. Mahathir employed a Chinese driver. His later contention, that never realized that I was doing something odd" and that he hired the man because he asked for the job and spoke Malay, should be taken with more than a grain of salt. His friends in Kuala Lumpur certainly let him know they found the arrangement "unusual". Remember that Dr. Mahathir had cited Malays working as drivers as evidence of their marginalization in Singapore. As he once told a friend, driver sits in the front of the car, but who is the tuan? The master sits in the back. Who opens the door? The driver."[65]

Nationally, the UMNO-led Malays, energized by the likes of Dr. Mahathir, secured arrangements for independence largely on their terms, following British re-recognition in 1948 that Malaya was essentially the land of the Malays. Independent Malaya, which materialized on 31 August 1957, was a "Malay" nation-state where the "special position" of the Malays was recognized in the Constitution. The sovereignty of the sultans in the nine Malay states was reaffirmed, and they were given powers to reserve government jobs, licences, services and scholarships for Malays, exercised in practice through political leaders.

But while the British conceded Malay political primacy among the various races, they insisted that UMNO work out a basis for inter-racial cooperation, unity and