Park
Geun-hye at first thought running for president would be a cakewalk for
her. Should her dreams come true, she would become the first female
head of state in the modern history of the Korean Peninsula. South
Koreaās opposition parties were not able to present a challenger of
high caliber, while the economic boom over the last few years under
President Lee Myung-bak ā who comes from the same ruling party as Parkās
ā appeared to create a feel-good factor that refused to go away.
Her
presidential aspiration was also accoladed by her being the daughter of
Park Chung-hee, the military strongman who oversaw the most spectacular
transformation of an economic backwater into an industrial powerhouse
in the 1960s through the 1970s. Not until a series of corruption
allegations against her close aides emerged, which triggered a massive
internal strife as is so often the case in South Korean politics. Adding
to the disarray in Parkās political campaign is the talk of two other
candidates joining forces to ensure the liberal camp would prevail.
Park
has since been running neck-and-neck against her rivals in opinion
polls. Forced into a corner, she had no option but to publicly apologise
for all the wrongdoings committed by the state during her fatherās
economically miraculous but politically oppressive rule. For many
older South Koreans who lived through the White Terror between 1961 and
1979, Chung-hee was a ruthless leader who tolerated no dissent and
showed no qualms in flexing his own iron fist if necessary.
Among his most prominent targets of assassination was Kim Dae-jung, who was to become the first democratically elected president from the opposition camp in 1997. Controversially, Chung-hee (right)
is also widely credited with paving a firm foundation for South Koreaās
future ascension as a developed nation. When one buys a Samsung,
Hyundai or LG product today, one ought to know it was Chung-hee who was
instrumental in making these domestic business entities global giants of
the 21st century. His legacy as such was so sorely missed that the Time magazine named him among the top ten Asians of the Century in 1999.
Taking the moral high ground
By
and large, the jury is still out on Chung-heeās nearly two decades of
iron rule, but his human rights violations have finally caught up with
his daughter, who is now compelled to make a clean break with her
fatherās past, something truly extraordinary in a deeply filial and
Confucian society. Up until then, she had remained silent on the
issue but has done so to make up for her lack of democratic credentials.
In other words, her apology is meant to regain the moral high ground
over her opponents.
While not quite our answer to Park, at least
not in terms of electoral politics, there is no dispute that Marina
Mahathir is one of the outstanding public figures Malaysians have seen.
Her steadfast fight against stigmatisation of HIV victims is well
acknowledged, and she does not mince her words whenever the political
scene becomes ugly and idiotic, her solidarity with Bersih
co-chairperson Ambiga Sreenevasan when the latter came under the
contemptuous attack from Perkasa and other Umno members, for instance.
My highly - and many would say self-indulgently ā critical view of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad (left)
is well known. Still, I would never question the fact that Mahathir
loves his own children dearly, and that his wife Siti Hasmah has been a
model prime ministerās wife and is also an elegant Malay lady who always
knows her place and never oversteps her boundaries, unlike you know
who. But that is in the private sphere of family life. Publicly
however, Mahathir remains the man who has shaped Malaysia beyond
recognition over his 22-year rein, and the negative impact of his
policies only started to surface after he stepped down.
Down, but
not out. Mahathir is so fearful of even a minuscule reversion of his
policies that he has been making one irresponsible, divisive and many a
time racist statement after another, seeking to tear the country apart
with a vengeance and appearing to be the one pulling the strings behind
Umnoās thick veil of complexities.
Mahathir at the heart of Malaysian malaise
In her recent interview
in Singapore, Marina Mahathir talked candidly about what she considers
has gone wrong in Malaysia: the education system, censorship, money
politics and the resort to sex in the political scene. I am
certain her views as such echo Malaysian public sentiments, but in
choosing to downplay her fatherās influence in her position today, I
cannot help regretting that she is still not facing up to the realities.
Extensive
scholarly research has confirmed it was Mahathirās long and
authoritarian rule that bred cronyism, corruption, the suffocation of
dissent and the malfunctioning of the judicial and political
institutions. From Khoo Boo Teikās 'The Paradoxes of Mahathirism', Jomo Kwame Sundaramās and Terence Gomezās 'Malaysiaās Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits', Diana K Mauzyās and RS Milneās 'Malaysian Politics Under Mahathir', Ahmad Mustapa Hassanās 'The Unmaking of Malaysia' and, Barry Wainās 'The Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times', it has been proven time and again that Mahathir is at the very heart of the Malaysian malaise today.
Among them, Wain (above, left in picture)
has written perhaps by far the most important book on Mahathir and
claimed also that the strongman had wasted or burned up to RM100 billion
on grandiose projects, corruption and currency speculations, an
allegation that Mahathir himself fails conspicuously to refute. Hence,
how can Marina Mahathir simply dismiss her fatherās political impact on
the nation by saying āoften people made me feel I had to be responsible
for everything he didā, and āsometimes I became the surrogate for
criticismā?
Of course she should not be held responsible for
Mahathirās reign of terror, but she must also remember she is who she is
today largely due to her fatherās powerful presence in the country. Put
differently: why were Perkasa and Umno ultra quick to pick on the
Bersih committee members and other opposition leaders but were timid to
go against her? Would her fate have been vastly different if her father
was not Mahathir Mohamad but Muthu, Ah Beng, Ali or David? Or one may also ask if her siblings Mukhriz (left), Mokhzani and Mirzan would have been super rich if they did not carry the name Mahathir.
Who,
as education minister, effectively killed off an initially vibrant
campus and student politics? Who saw it convenient to play up the
nationalistic card and latter lamented (and continues to lament) the
appalling standard of English among Malaysians? How many leaders
in the world have ever demonstrated a rare show of audacity by sacking
three Supreme Court judges and suspending five others in one go? And,
most crucially, who set off the biggest political crisis in Malaysia by
mercilessly persecuting Anwar Ibrahim by way of unfounded sex scandals,
creating a climate of fear on the part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) communities and turning the country into an
international laughing stock?
āHope she harbours no political ambitionsā
I
am not here to judge Marina Mahathir personally, for I do support many
of the good causes that she champions and appreciate her timely support
for Bersih and other just-minded social movements. My opinion is simply that she cannot go on criticizing all that has gone awry under both Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (left, in photo) and Najib Abdul Razak (right in photo), without also taking a deep look at what preceded them. Knowing
that she will keep quiet, I can only hope that she harbours no
political ambitions, or her fatherās long and dark shadow might haunt
her as is the case of Park in South Korea.
After all, it is not
easy being a daughter of a strongman, especially one who has nearly
destroyed all the public institutions in the country in the name of
race, religion, nationalism and development. .Malaysiakini
JOSH HONG studied
politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic
and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will
learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in
spite of politicians.
