SINGAPORE: Marina Mahathir was a critic of the government even when her father, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, was Prime Minister of Malaysia between 1981 and 2003.
In fact, some wondered if she did it on purpose just so that she wouldn’t have to live in his shadow forever.
She rejects that.
“I am not conniving like that. I just say what I believe is the truth and what makes me comfortable, which never depends on whims, fancies or gossip.”
She points out that on some issues, she and her father have actually always been aligned.
“My own voice developed through my AIDS advocacy work and I am forever grateful to it. And my dad, being a doctor, understood it better than most. He was the first PM who met and talked with a HIV-positive person, without at first knowing she was, and the first person who officially talked about ‘compulsory licensing’ for anti-retroviral drugs.”
Today, as he has been drawn back into politics because of his vocal opposition to current Prime Minister Najib Razak, their views seem more aligned than ever in suggesting that Malaysia needs change.
At the age of 92, he has been named the prime ministerial candidate for the Malaysian opposition Pakatan Harapan coalition in the next election.
While in Singapore for a recent global leadership conference organised by YPO, the world’s premier peer network of chief executives, Ms Marina took time out to discuss not just herself but her father.
She might have disagreed with him, but they always came across as close.
“My father and I never really had a problem and we never let our differences affect our relationship.”
Today, she admires and respects him for wanting to return to the political fray.
“He’s helped built Malaysia and he’s seeing it destroyed. He feels he just can’t sit by and do nothing. On the other hand of course, he is 92. We were so happy and relieved when he stepped down in 2003 because we finally got our dad back and he’s got 18 grandchildren to play with. On the one hand, we understand why he wants to do it. On the other, we spend a lot more time worrying about his health.
“Although for a 92-year-old he’s in quite amazing health compared to so many others; he’s prone to colds, which is understandable if you’re meeting hundreds of people all the time and shaking hands all the time.”
He recently spent a few days in hospital due to a chest infection.
Ms Marina is often seen on the campaign trail with him these days, although she herself is not running for political office.
In the early days, this was never the case as she was busy carving out her own identity.
Marina Mahathir started off as a journalist and has published several compilations of her columns over the years. (Photo: Facebook / Marina Mahathir)
“WE ARE CONSTANTLY IN A STATE OF ANXIETY”
She is what one would call a “loving critic”, who surfaces what she sees as the government’s neglect of the rights of marginalised groups because she loves her country.
Her career in HIV/AIDS advocacy saw her serve as President of the Malaysian AIDS Council from 1993 to 2005 and as chairperson of the Malaysian AIDS Foundation. Over the years, she’s spoken up about other issues, including race-based politics, minority rights, freedom of speech and women’s rights.
For her it’s about a “real belief and commitment to equality.”
These days she’s very much involved in the Muslim women’s rights organisation, Sisters in Islam, campaigning on issues such as polygamy, child marriage and violence against women.
It’s challenging to say the least, as conservative groups often take issue with them.
“Because we are challenging authority, we are challenging the traditional interpretations of the Quran, which seems to put women down and they don’t like that.
“We’ve had our books banned. We’ve had people trying to ban the organisation. There’s currently a fatwa against us. It’s a fatwa by Selangor state that basically declares liberalism and pluralism as deviant thinking.”
She is visibly exasperated.
“We have all these fatwas all over the place. But what’s unusual is that this fatwa actually mentions Sisters in Islam. Once fatwas are gazetted and become law, it would empower the state religious department to do many things to us.”
This would include seizing their publications and closing their offices.
“So we put a judicial review on it and we’re still fighting it.”
They have been in and out of court for the last three years.
“We are constantly in a state of anxiety,” she adds. But there have been many victories as well.
When their book, “Muslim Women and Challenges of Islamic Fundamentalism” was banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs, they sued the minister and won.
“The judiciary has been quite good in many cases so we’re getting very familiar with the courts.”
She claims in other areas things are “getting worse”.
“The Islamic Development Department has a RM1 billion budget. They have to spend it. So they spend it on all sorts of ridiculous things – more raids, seminars against the LGBT community, campaigns against liberals and pluralists and whatever, all these nonsensical things.”
She feels the money could be better spent on curbing corruption or poverty.
She believes the issue of religion has been instrumentalised to some extent and is a red herring to detract from the real issues.
“It’s so annoying and yet so distracting because it saps energy from the things that we really need to fight for.”
HAS ACTIVISM FAILED?
Does she ever want to just throw in the towel?
“No, there have been many successes in the Muslim world and so we know that change is possible, Turkey changed their constitution to consider men and women as equal in the marriage. Tunisia banned polygamy in 1957.There are changes happening all over the Muslim world driven by women, and when you read all this, you know that things are possible. Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on driving. How does that not give you hope?”
So while she describes success in other Muslim countries, why are similar things not happening in Malaysia?
“A lack of political will. Simply that. We have a very male-centric government. There are only three women in a very expanded cabinet and so women’s issues just don’t come up. They have declared this year Women Empowerment Year, which is incredibly ironic,” she says laughingly, clearly amused.
“Because it is very clearly, very blatantly a vote-getting tactic. It actually means nothing. Malaysia was just reviewed by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) committee and we were dismal. They could not answer so many basic questions. They were asked what they are doing about child marriage and they couldn’t give a direct answer. It is pitiful. We ratified CEDAW in 1995 and we’re still at the same stage we were then.”
Might this indicate a failure on the part of civil society activists like herself?
“We try. We have tried. We have been advocating on so many issues. We’ve written innumerable memorandums, we’ve had marches, we’ve had all sorts of things but they don’t respond.”
The inability to persuade would indicate her activism has failed, wouldn’t it, I ask.
“No, I don’t think we have failed exactly because they do react but they don’t necessarily take action. I think ultimately it comes to parliament. When you only have 10 per cent women in parliament, it’s very hard to push for a women’s rights bill to come up.”
Why has she then never considered joining politics herself?
She repeats what she has said in previous interviews – that she finds party politics “toxic” and has issues following party rules.
“I like being in civil society where I can hold everyone accountable regardless of which side of the divide they are.”
ABOUT DR MAHATHIR
Marina Mahathir says today she is finally “in sync” with her dad on “many things” including the urgent need to fight corruption. (Photo: Facebook / Marina Mahathir)
This is where her father comes up again. Why couldn’t he have done more for women when he was in office?
She claims that relatively, women saw greater advancement in politics during his tenure as prime minister.
“He certainly promoted a lot of women. He had a lot of women ministers in a smaller cabinet and doing what are considered traditionally unfeminine jobs like international trade and industry. But I guess the reality in forming a cabinet is you have to take into account all sorts of interests. All that made it difficult to put more women in.”
It’s clear we need to talk about her father, even though for many years, she was concerned about living in his shadow.
She says she is happy to see that Pakatan Harapan’s manifesto includes women’s rights.
However, while he was Prime Minister, some of her father’s actions ran counter to what rights activists advocated.
For instance, he was known to have deployed the Internal Security Act.
She disagreed with some of these actions, sometimes openly.
“But the point is that I was never told to stop talking. I know people went to my dad and said ‘Why is Marina saying all these things?’ and he just shrugged.”
In spite of her sometimes open opposition to his actions, in some quarters she is often seen as a “surrogate” for her father, she says.
“The name does open doors and give me a platform. But (among his detractors), people get at me just because of my name which I think is unjust but what can I do? That’s annoying. People start attacking you without knowing anything. Don’t even know you and make assumptions about you.”
While she opposed some of his government’s policies at times, she concedes they weren’t all bad.
“I’ve never, never directly criticised him as a person. I’ve always criticised the government as a whole. I also know that he also did a lot of good things. My father presided over many years of prosperity as well. So you kind of have to plus minus and weigh it all and make the best use of what’s good and work on the ‘not good’ things.”
She says today she is finally “in sync” with her dad on “many things” including the urgent need to fight corruption.
However, while her father recently apologised for some of his actions, notably the treatment of his then-deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, one wonders how she reconciles her feelings about his past actions with her support for him today.
First, we talk about what she thinks about his recent move to join forces with Mr Anwar.
“Both of them are trying to be expedient for a good thing, which is to clean up this country and to get rid of corrupt people. That’s a good thing and you need alliances to do that. Nobody can do it on their own. The criticism before was that the opposition was fractured. Well now, it’s a lot less so.”
Looking back, how does she feel about her father’s past dealings with Mr Anwar?
“It’s a difficult balance because on the one hand, my parents taught me to think and to have my own mind and they also instilled certain values in us, a real strict adherence to the truth, social justice and things like that.”
But some have suggested his actions did not seem to support social justice.
“I don’t think he was anti-social justice or anything like that.”
Why then does she think he did the things he did?
“I think he based it all on the facts that were presented to him and he was advised to do this and to do that and that’s what he went with. I can’t really speak more than that for him.
“I think he had his reasons and he may well have been wrong. I think now he’s also saying that he was wrong. He’s also seeing the cumulative effects of it which is, I think at his age and having been through all that, quite something.”
She claims “he’s open to learning things”.
“For instance, he used to be very anti-demonstrations and then he decided to go and see for himself, the Bersih 4 rally and found that it was nothing like what he thought and that’s why he’s there at the Bersih 5 rally. It is possible to have hundreds of thousands of people assemble peacefully for a cause. So he’s changing his mind on a lot of things and I think that’s great.”
“EMPATHISED A LOT” WITH ANWAR’S FAMILY
However, one incident in her own childhood in 1969 brought up an almost visceral empathy for Mr Anwar’s family when he was jailed in 1998.
“I remember very, very clearly there was the announcement on TV that my father was expelled from UMNO. I was 11 and I didn’t understand what expelled meant. I thought it meant he was going to jail. I was very upset. I was really shaken. It was why I empathised a lot with Anwar’s daughters when that happened to him in 1998. I knew what it felt like at 11 years old to have this thing you don’t understand happen.
“My daughter went to school with one of Anwar’s daughters. They’re the same age and she talked about how his daughter came to school right after it happened and sat at the back of the room and just cried the whole day. It’s all these human things.”
In spite of how she felt, she didn’t reach out to Mr Anwar’s family.
“I think you need to understand the circumstances then to understand that you don’t reach out without it being misunderstood or more likely rebuffed. So no, I didn’t because one does not, no matter what one feels personally about the human side of things.”
Marina Mahathir with her parents. She describes them as a “very close-knit family” even though their views on issues might differ. (Photo: Facebook / Marina Mahathir)
THE POLITICS OF RACE
Race-based politics is another issue that bothers her. Her father too was said to have practised it, but she finds it “baffling”.
“I don’t understand it. You want everyone to vote for you but at the same time you’re trying to divide people and therefore you’re dividing voters up. I don’t understand why they are alienating one whole lot of voters whom they actually need. They’re not just dividing people by race, but also by age. There isn’t much encouragement for young people to register to vote even though they are the largest block of unregistered voters. The politicians are also trying to divide people by sexuality, quite forgetting for instance that LGBT persons also vote.
“There are cross-cutting issues to focus on instead. The economy and corruption are cross-cutting issues. Climate change is also a cross-cutting issue. If you’re flooded out, you’re flooded out. That’s it. The flood doesn’t care what race you are.”
She has faith that Malaysians can rise above politics though.
“There are still a lot of sensible heads around particularly among young people who are trying to push back against this type of thing. For instance race – I think over Chinese New Year, some mosques actually had Chinese New Year celebrations. It’s a strong gesture and a symbol of what Malaysia is.”
She claims her father today has a “broad overview” of things because of his “long experience.” While he was accused of practising race-based politics in the past, she says growing up, she never felt as if race or religion should divide people.
Her parents enrolled her in a convent school and she was one of the few Malay girls there.
“At that time, a lot of Malay parents were worried about sending their girls to be educated by nuns, as if nuns spend the time proselytizing. They didn’t, not much at all. Of course there was a cross there, there was pictures of Jesus all over the place but it didn’t really bother us and the education was good.”
However, the affirmative action policies that preceded Dr Mahathir and that he continued to oversee, affected people’s perceptions of her. The fact that she was the prime minister’s daughter sometimes exacerbated matters.
“I went to a boarding school in Malaysia, which was specifically for Malay girls but it was still merit-based. You had to take quite a tough exam to get in. I went in late because I had to have an operation before that and when I got there, I realised people already knew who my father was and the assumption was that I was there because of his name and not because I deserved it.
“I actually had someone say to me when we were waiting for our O-level exam results, ‘Oh Marina, I really worry for you.’ They thought I was bound to fail because I wasn’t smart enough to be there actually.”
This has made her empathise with a lot of “the really smart young Malays who get places in schools but are thought to only be there because of their race”.
So does she think Malaysia is ready to do away with affirmative action policies?
For that to happen, she says there needs to be a better education system that can ensure social mobility for every citizen. That’s something the government needs to work on urgently according to her.
Another issue she considers urgent is freedom of the press.
“Nobody wants to read any of the mainstream press anymore and these companies are suffering financially. If I were the CFO of these media companies, I would say, ‘For God’s sake, just open it up so that I can make money’. Then people would stop relying entirely on social media and all this stuff that goes around. You just don’t know whether it’s true. I spend so much time dispelling hoaxes and untruths. Who has the time to do that?”
WHAT IF HER FATHER SUCCEEDS?
I wonder if she would change her mind about joining politics if her father succeeds in the upcoming election.
“I have been part of the advocacy for women’s issues for a long time.. I think without the work that civil society does, we wouldn’t have our Domestic Violence Act or changes to maternity leave or the 30 per cent quota for board positions. So I don’t think we need to be in politics necessarily because even if you are in government, you still need to rely on civil society to tell you what the issues are. In a truly democratic society, it would be a mutually respectful partnership between government and civil society that would bring about change.
“We will hold whichever government accountable.”
She would however consider taking on a smaller role achieving more immediate and tangible changes.
“I wish they would bring back local elections. If there were elections for mayor of KL or something, I might be interested. I feel like I can ‘touch’ it more. It’s a smaller role and in a way, less abstract because what’s so difficult about cleaning up the streets? It can be challenging but you can kind of see it, right? Or, trying to solve traffic problems or feeding the homeless. We have currently a City Hall that says you shouldn’t feed the homeless because it will just make more people homeless. It will incentivise them. What sort of thinking is that?”
Her own father never encouraged her or her siblings to join politics.
“I think he was afraid that with the name, we would get a leg-up immediately. It wouldn’t be fair.”
She however regrets never following him on the campaign trail when he was prime minister.
“I wrote a column then and I wanted to have a neutral stand on things, to hold everyone accountable so I didn’t want to be seen taking sides. But I think it would have been a good experience. If I ever write a book, what am I going to say about his life in politics at that time? I never went on the campaign trail.”
She’s clearly trying to make up for it today.
However, in spite of the fact that her larger-than-life father is back in the spotlight, Ms Marina is confident she’s built her own identity. It’s something her dad is realising too, she says.
“Sometimes, we’re at the same event and I get a bigger applause. Then my dad kind of looks like at me like ‘Who are you?’ I’ve put in the slog and the ground work to be my own person and to have my own substance.”
