Sunday, December 6, 2009

Mahathir


Rasa ingin tahu tentang Mahathir belum pernah pudar dalam diri saya. Buku terbaru tentangnya,Malaysian Maverick – Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain, telah merangsang kuat keinginan untuk memiliki dan membacanya.

Tambahan pula Malaysiakini memberitakan:

‘Malaysian Maverick’ is the first independent, full-length study of Mahathir, who retired in 2003 after more than two decades as premier. The book will be published globally next week by Palgrave Macmillan.

Wain writes that the Mahathir administration, which took office in 1981 with the slogan, “clean, efficient, trustworthy”, was almost immediately embroiled in financial scandals that “exploded with startling regularity”.

By the early 1990s, he says, cynics remarked that it had been “a good decade for bad behaviour, or a bad decade for good behaviour”.

Secret military deal with US

The book also reveals that:

- Mahathir, despite his nationalistic rants, signed a secret security agreement with the United States in 1984 that gave the Americans access to a jungle warfare training school in Johor and allowed them to set up a small-ship repair facility at Lumut and a plant in Kuala Lumpur to repair C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.

- Mahathir used a secret fund of his ruling Umno to turn the party into a vast conglomerate with investments that spanned almost the entire economy.

- Mahathir’s Umno financed its new Putra World Trade Centre headquarters in Kuala Lumpur partly with taxpayers money, by forcing state-owned banks to write off at least RM140 million in interest on Umno loans.

Wain, who is now a writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, however credits Mahathir with engineering the country’s economic transformation, deepening industrialisation and expanding Malaysia’s middle class.

But Mahathir had undermined state institutions, permitted the spread of corruption and failed to provide for Malaysia’s future leadership, he says.

Lagi baca review di Asia Sentinel:

Book Review: Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times

5 comments:

Nora Isma Fuad said...

as salam, saya sendiri kurang selesa membaca apa yang diperkatakan orang lain tentang hero saya ini. Saya lebih suka membaca apa yang Tun katakan.. his very own opinions..

Isma Ae Mohamad said...

salam,
Alamak penyokong Tun rupanya!

saya sendiri pun tidak sabar mahu membaca autobigrafi yang sedang ditulis Dr M. Agaknya bila akan terbit.

Nora Isma Fuad said...

as salam,

suami sis kata orang lelaki yang baca novel ni mungkin:
1. banyak sangat masa lapang.
2.kesunyian
3.mencari cinta / jiwang.

anda daripada kategori yang mana? sis pasti anda tidaklah banyak masa lapang,tidak kesunyian tapi bab mencari cinta, tak juga pasti.. mungkin sudah bertemu cinta - Hawa anda?

Isma Ae Mohamad said...

Kategori mana?

Saya sentiasa sibuk!Jarang ada di rumah.

Hidup saya tidak pernah sunyi!

Saya terlibat dengan media massa.Saya baca novel kerana hendak hilang tekanan selepas membaca (buku atau artikel politik) dan menulis artikel yang bersifat serius dan sekali sekala saya lepas tekanan itu dengan menulis blog.Saya anggap novel adalah ''dadah.''

Jiwang? semua kawan rapat anggap saya seorang yang serius, asyik cakap politik.Dan ramai kawan saya tidak tahu pun saya ni pembaca novel.Saya sendiri pun rasa saya ni jiwang, cuma saya banyak pendamkan.

Cinta--ya, belum bertemu lagi.Kerana saya sibuk cari berita--menyelam tapi tidak minum air.Takut lemas. Saya pernah lemas dulu.Sampai hari ini pun masih terasa.

Nora Isma Fuad said...

well Isma, jangan anggap lemas akan lemas selamanya. kak pernah lemas beberapa kali sebelum dapat berpaut..

jangan serik, usaha dan berdoa, okay. Insya-Allah, setiasa ada 'Hawa' pada setiap Adam.