Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times Barry Wain (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

As prime minister, Dr. Mahathir was keen to reduce the political influence of the ambitious Tengku Razaleigh, who twice challenged Musa Hitam for the deputy premier's slot. Although almost unknown to the Malaysian public then, Daim was a close friend of Dr. Mahathir and one of Malaysia's most successful bumiputra businessmen. He would be primarily responsible for integrating politics and business in Malaysia,[20] though philosophically the connection was made by Dr. Mahathir, who was consumed by the ambition to transform Malaysia into a modern industrialized society.[21]

The youngest of 13 children of a Kedah government clerk, Daim had made it big in property development after studying law in Britain and returning home to work both as a government magistrate and prosecutor, and as a private lawyer. Abandoning in 1969 the law firm he opened only the year before, Daim failed in his early business ventures, in plastics and salt making. He got his break in 1973 when he used his political connections to obtain a large tract of land in Kuala Lumpur — then in Selangor state, but soon to become federal territory — which he and two partners turned into a residential community named Taman Maluri. While forced to sell the first houses at cost, they cashed in when property prices soared in 1976. Declared Daim's friendly biographers, "With the housing boom, Daim made his fortune. He owned one square mile [2.6 square kilometres] of the federal territory...he also had land in other places...Daim's dream of becoming a millionaire had come true".[22]

The accumulation of so much wealth so quickly was a source of wonder that marked Daim as an audacious and deft operator in the new, pro-bumiputra business environment. He declared he was the first Malay to donate RM100,000 to UMNO.[23] By 1977, still not 40, Daim had made enough money to "retire", taking himself off to Berkeley in the United States for two years to study urban planning at the University of California.

On his return home, Daim accepted a position as the non-salaried chairman of Peremba Bhd., a subsidiary of the government's bureaucratic and poorly run Urban Development Authority, an agency to promote bumiputra investment in the property market. At Peremba, formed at his suggestion to group commercial real-estate holdings, he gathered around him a coterie of bright young Malay executives, many trained in accountancy and engineering, who would become household names as major corporate and UMNO players. Known as Daim's protégés, or the Peremba boys, most of them maintained close ties with him across the deals and years.

Daim's rapid ascendancy coincided with Dr. Mahathir's assumption of the prime ministership in 1981. Although he held no official position, behind the scenes Daim acted as a troubleshooter for Dr. Mahathir, travelling to the United States to lobby for a change in tin reserves policy and discussing bilateral problems with the British in London. While Daim was 13 years younger than Dr. Mahathir and they did not get to know each other until adulthood, they were from the same poor neighbourhood in Alor Star, and hit if off. Daim seemed to embody the new breed of dynamic bumiputra that Dr. Mahathir was trying to create. As Daim told local reporters, "I went into business to prove one thing: that a Malay can also succeed in business. Before now, Malays have only been company directors, mainly figureheads on display."[24]

Operating mostly below the radar screen, Daim in 1982 won control of a bank, the established path to serious wealth in Malaysia. His successful bid again raised eyebrows because he prevailed over several bumiputra-controlled companies, some of them government affiliated, which were at least as well qualified. Also, in approving his 51 per cent stake, Bank Negara, the central bank, ignored its usual insistence that majority control of a commercial bank be held by a corporate entity rather than an individual, especially one with little experience in banking and finance. The decisive factor: Dr. Mahathir gave the transaction his blessing.[25]

Neither Daim's move to Fleet to manage UMNO's finances, nor the simultaneous restructuring of the French-owned Banque de L'Indochine & de Suez that gave him control of its replacement, locally incorporated Malaysian French Bank Bhd., were publicly announced at the time. The sensitivity of Daim's close association with Dr. Mahathir and his undercover role at Fleet was reflected in undeclared sanctions against the Hong Kong-based Asian Wall Street Journal, which reported both developments. After the paper carried an article on Daim's expected acquisition of Indosuez, the government — on Dr. Mahathir's orders — began systematically to delay distribution of the daily to subscribers in Malaysia. The government also blocked for a month a subsequent edition of the paper that described Daim's appointment to head Fleet.[26]

When Dr. Mahathir appointed Daim, 46, to his Cabinet in 1984, it capped a three-year rise from near obscurity to one of Malaysia's most powerful figures, during which he assembled a private empire that included major stakes in a number of publicly listed companies. His preferred style was to make extensive use of the stock market, with rights issues and share swaps, often pledging the shares he was buying to secure loans for the transaction. Along the way he forged close links with some of the best-connected Malaysian Chinese businessmen, and shrewdly exploited the cozy, often loosely regulated business environment. Having been persuaded by Dr. Mahathir to contest a parliamentary seat two years earlier, Daim replaced Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah as finance minister as well as treasurer of UMNO.

The state of UMNO's finances, when Dr. Mahathir came to power and Daim took control of the purse strings, is strongly disputed. As UMNO split a few years later and polarized around factions led by Dr. Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh, the matter was bitterly debated. It was the genesis of gossip and speculation in UMNO circles about the party eventually being looted of RM5 billion or RM6 billion. Dr. Mahathir and Daim insisted that Tengku Razaleigh left UMNO's finances thoroughly depleted. Dr. Mahathir directed his criticism not just at Fleet's bottom line, but at