Malaysian Power Shuffle Hides a Battle Over Image 
International Herald Tribune
September 4, 1998
Thomas Fuller

Beyond disagreements over economic policy and allegations of misconduct lies a deeper rift between Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, and the man who fired him, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad.

The story of these two men and their struggle for power over the past year is about style, image control and the way in which Mr. Anwar positioned himself on the world scene as a moderate and acceptable choice for prime minister — a move taken at the expense of his outspoken boss.

Mr. Anwar, 51, press savvy and ambitious, was until Wednesday the prime minister's anointed successor. Mr. Mahathir, the country's leader for 16 years, is awkward in front of cameras and is often described as an old-school politician: not caring much for polishing his image for the sake of the media and foreign fund managers.

With a retinue of analysts, spin doctors and speechwriters, Mr. Anwar went to pains to portray himself as

a liberal and dynamic alternative to Mr. Mahathir, 73. Realizing the importance of image control, he and his advisers gave special treatment to the foreign media in Malaysia through interviews and candid off-the-record briefings.

Mr. Anwar, who was also finance minister, was in favor of generational change and was in touch with the world, his advisers stressed; Mr. Mahathir was a crony capitalist who should step down.

Mr. Mahathir is a frequent critic of the media, and, in his usual unfiltered style, has attacked currency speculators for "destroying" the Malaysian economy, warned of neo-colonialism and even said he suspected a Jewish conspiracy was at work in precipitating the regional economic crisis.

His attitude toward the press is more raw than Mr. Anwar's: control, not spin. He meets regularly with editors of local newspapers admonishing them to be more "positive" in their coverage. And when he feels the coverage is unfair, he uses street tactics. Last month two top editors allied with Mr. Anwar were dismissed from their posts.

Mr. Anwar's efforts at image control have annoyed Mr. Mahathir, something he has hinted at frequently.

Mr. Anwar's liberal, Western-looking image was sometimes in sharp contrast to the man himself — at least as he is known in Malaysia. In his youth, Mr. Anwar was a champion of radical, occasionally anti-Western, Islamic views.
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He entered politics as the head of an Islamic youth organization. In 1979, he visited Iran to meet and congratulate Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on his coming to power. But since his appointment as deputy prime minister in 1995, Mr. Anwar has been portrayed as a liberal thinker and defender of such high-minded notions as civil society and the rebirth of philosophy in Asia.

On Thursday, at a news conference in which Mr. Anwar vowed to rescue his imperiled political career, he conceded that he had perhaps overstepped the line in promoting his views at the expense of Mr. Mahathir's.

Referring to a book of essays he published two years ago titled "The Asian Renaissance,"— in which he wrote about such issues as press freedom and democracy, Mr. Anwar said Thursday: "That probably was a mistake. I said too much in that book." Filled with references to sources as diverse as Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Adam Smith, the book was said to have been largely written by one of his closest advisers.

But perhaps the best or, as it turns out, the worst example of Mr. Anwar's efforts to control his image was a flattering cover story in the Asian edition of Time magazine last October entitled "Anwar and the Future of Asia." "Malaysia's No. 2 is the star of a rising generation of leaders, but will Mahathir give him a chance?" the magazine asked.

On Thursday, following his press conference, Mr. Anwar spotted one of the authors of the Time article while walking through a crowd of photographers and reporters. Pointing his finger at the reporter, he said half seriously: "The Time magazine article caused it all. You caused it all."

In the article, Mr. Anwar was portrayed as a cosmopolitan leader free from the "hang-ups" of the colonial experience, a direct dig at the older Mr. Mahathir, who was 32 years old when Malaysia became independent from Britain. (Mr. Anwar was 10.) Time described Mr. Anwar as a fan of Western classical music — he "wakes mornings to the strains of Italian opera," the article said — and a reader of Western and Eastern philosophy.

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