Malaysia Malaysian maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in turbulent times

摘要

Barry Wain's controversial book on Malaysia's fourth prime minister was almost banned by the Malaysian government when it first rolled off the press. It is indeed an achievement that it was not, perhaps because it was a fair and balanced portrayal of the man in question. It manages to focus on the personal, even heart-warming sides of Mahathir Mohamad, the family man, but ends up as a powerful treatise on Malaysian politics. The most useful concept that Wain has stated (just once on p. 53) in describing Malaysia under Mahathir was that the man had created a party-state. The exploration of this concept was not the book's intention but it has inadvertently provided much data to chart the birth of this party-state, how it reached its apex and how it would eventually decline. The party-state, though not elaborated by Wain, appears as the outcome of the Mahathir-rule. Before this, studies on the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan have noticed the blurring of the distinction between party and state, hence the notion of the party-state. The book provides even more grounds to undertake a comparative study of all seemingly 'party-states' of Asia-under the helms of United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in Malaysia, Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan and the People's Action Party (PAP) in Singapore, to name some of the more outstanding ones.