What's wrong with Malaysia

The institutions, as inherited from the British, generally worked. The judiciary was independent, it was fairly conservative but it worked and the police force was okay. And other elements in the bureaucracy worked. But after 50 years of the party being in power for 50 years, a half a century, the bureaucracy and the heads of those bureaucratic institutions have become extensions of the ruling party.

Mark Colvin, ABC News

MARK COLVIN: More than 50 Australian federal MPs have signed a letter to the Malaysian Government protesting against the trial of the former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.

It's the second time Anwar has been brought to court charged with sodomy, a fact that the letter describes as hard to believe for many friendly observers of Malaysia.

The man who organised the letter, Melbourne Labor MP Michael Danby, says supporters of the incumbent government are manipulating the legal system to drive Malaysia's best known leader out of national politics.

Barry Wain is writer-in-residence at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and he says the Anwar trial and much else that's wrong with Malaysia, can be traced back to Dr Mahathir Mohamad's long rule as prime minister.

He's just published a book called Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times.

I asked him to explain the Anwar case.

BARRY WAIN: At many levels it's inexplicable because the court case is underway one doesn't want to go into all the details of it. It's sufficient to say that right from the beginning when he was accused of sodomy the second time around 18 months ago, the public opinion polls showed that almost nobody in Malaysia believed the charges, the international community does not believe the charges…

MARK COLVIN: It's widely regarded as an entirely political trial.

BARRY WAIN: It is absolutely regarded as a political trial.

MARK COLVIN: The first one was pretty clearly demonstrated as such when the inspector general of police was proved guilty of having beaten him up so badly.

BARRY WAIN: And there were other factors as well; the special branch was found to have sort of kidnapped and intimidated and tortured witnesses who were then required to testify against Anwar.

MARK COLVIN: How does it come to this though? Your book is about Dr Mahathir and you seem to really reach the conclusion that he completely broke down the separation between the state, the government and the judiciary.

BARRY WAIN: The broad area that he did most damage was in institutions; he really cut the institutions adrift in Malaysia. The institutions, as inherited from the British, generally worked. The judiciary was independent, it was fairly conservative but it worked and the police force was okay. And other elements in the bureaucracy worked.

But after 50 years of the party being in power for 50 years, a half a century, the bureaucracy and the heads of those bureaucratic institutions have become extensions of the ruling party.

And Dr Mahathir himself definitely interfered with the judiciary. He sought to subjugate the judiciary to get the political outcome he wanted and that opened a way for monetary corruption into the judiciary.

MARK COLVIN: You said at the beginning that he'd achieved some very big things and some of those are fairly obvious; there are big buildings and bridges and things that you can see; but you also say in your book that essentially he lost Malaysia a very great deal of money. How was that?

BARRY WAIN: I devoted an entire chapter to financial scandals and I excluded from that chapter just some massive projects; for instance he built a new administrative capital for Malaysia called Putrajaya and the initial price for that was something like 20 billion ringgit; it's a lot of money. If you go there and visit it now it's often looks like a bit of a ghost town.

So, ultimately whether that will be successful or not is not clear at this stage and Malaysians may have mixed feelings. I excluded those things, I even excluded his desire to build a national car; the proton, because it wasn't a financial scandal or a scam as such, it was simply it might have been misplaced but...

I just took four financial scandals and my estimate was that 50 million ringgit probably in direct losses in those. There was an attempt to rig the international tin market…

MARK COLVIN: What's that mean in say dollars?

BARRY WAIN: Well, that would have been $US20 billion at the exchange rate at the time and I think you can double that with the losses that you get through opportunity costs and other things other than the direct amounts.

MARK COLVIN: Is that known in Malaysia?

BARRY WAIN: Actually, it is known to the older generation among the politicians particularly, but it wasn't widely publicised at the time. Most of these financial scandals go back to the '80s, some of them in the early '80s; so half the population either wasn't born or was in primary school.

MARK COLVIN: So it doesn't come into play in elections for instance?

BARRY WAIN: It figured in some of the elections back there in the mid '80s and it figured in the split that took place in UMNO in 1987 when Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah the former finance minister challenged Dr Mahathir and almost defeated him.

That was the main accusation that Dr Mahathir had taken the ruling party into business and been involved in some of these scams such as trying to rig the international tin price.

MARK COLVIN: But for those not familiar with Malaysian politics it might seem puzzling as to why UMNO keeps on being re-elected given the failings that you have outlined.

BARRY WAIN: Yes and that sometimes is difficult to explain. One has to understand that political mobilisation in Malaysia takes place on racial lines, on ethnic lines, everything is on ethnic lines. Almost every party represents and ethnic group.

Constitutionally and in practice the Malays will run the country and UMNO, which is restricted of course to Malays, to a membership of Malays has always been the party of the Malays and so when it feels threatened, as it does now, it tends to play on those elements of Malay-ness and that includes Islam which is an essential element of Malay identity to rally people to the UMNO cause.

And sometimes this just plays on anxieties, plays on fears until people worry about what might happen if the Opposition, which is often portrayed in the past as predominantly Chinese, gets into power.

MARK COLVIN: It's a dangerous game?

BARRY WAIN: It's a very, very dangerous game and it's already led to extremism and again Anwar's trial can be seen as extreme. One would have hoped that Prime Minister Najib Razak, coming into power less than a year ago, might have moved to make sure that trial didn't take place.

If he was trying to, as he says he is, operating under a slogan of 'one Malaysia' and trying to bring about ethnic harmony.

MARK COLVIN: But does it mean then that Mahathir, like somebody like Lee Kuan Yu in Singapore or like President Putin in Russia is still around as a power?

BARRY WAIN: Well he's around. I don't think he has a lot of power. He has a blog site and it's a very popular one and he writes regularly on politics and buys into politics. He did help get rid of his successor, Abdullah Badawi, he turned on him very viciously.

So Dr Mahathir is there, he is a force, he's still got a fairly strongly following in the country but he doesn't by any means call the shots.

MARK COLVIN: Barry Wain, writer-in-residence at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

And you can hear a 15-minute version of that interview on our website from this evening at http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s2818351.htm.