Word: mahathir
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Building Kuala Lumpur's Islamic Arts Center, an Arabian gem replete with white marble, rippling fountains and sky blue onion-shaped domes in the middle of Malaysia's tropical capital, was a labor of love for two men. One of them is Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad. Prior to the four-story museum's completion in 1998, Mahathir would regularly show up at the construction site, often after his weekly equestrian sessions. At his side was a skinny, balding businessman named Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary. The two men would pore over blueprints, tour the site to monitor progress...
...Companies since he progressed beyond his first cattle and rice trading ventures in the 1980s. Still, there is no mistaking that he is the 76-year-old Prime Minister's new favorite son, and to many of those following his sudden rise, the story sounds all too familiar. (Mahathir did not respond to TIME's interview requests; Mokhtar declined to be interviewed.) Since the 1997 financial crisis, Malaysia has been treated by the international financial community as a pariah, perceived by critics as a country where outsiders can't win because the game of commerce is rigged by the government...
...many observers that argument is harder to believe because of the Mahathir-Mokhtar connection, which looks very much like the so-called "crony capitalism" that stained Malaysia's economic credentials in the first place. In the 1990s, Mahathir's administration showered huge government contracts and favorable loans on a select few businessmen. The policy, which was designed to create a group of model entrepreneurs among the country's majority ethnic Malays, was criticized at home and abroad as opaque, unfair, hugely wasteful and largely ineffective. The 1997 crisis hit Mahathir's handpicked favorites particularly hard; their inefficiently run and deeply...
...high tech at the expense of its unique natural and cultural assets. With the computer-chip industry in a slump, Penang's residents are now wondering if their enthusiasm was misguided, and whether they can lure tourists back to their beaches and historical treasures. Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose penchant for progress inspired much of the high-tech push, did not help their cause when he called Penang the dirtiest place in the country?twice...
...Abubakar: This is just a political game. I had never heard of the KMM or Jemaah Islamiah until I returned to Indonesia. I have not been back to Malaysia since 1999, so how could I be the KMM's leader? Jemaah Islamiah is an invention by Mahathir to instill fear in the Muslim community...