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Change Your Life! |
Mahathir had planned to double salaries for Malaysians |
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May 3, 2000 KUALA LUMPUR, MAY 2 (AP) - If Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had had his way nearly two years ago, he might have doubled the salaries of all Malaysians living in the Southeast Asian nation.
In an article published in Tuesday's New Straits Times, Mahathir disclosed that he had wanted to resort to drastic measures to battle the Asia's financial crisis, which threatened to sink the Malaysian economy and currency.
At its nadir, in mid-1998, the ringgit currency had lost nearly twice its value against the U.S. dollar.
"My first idea ... was to increase the income of everybody and raise the prices of everything in order to neutralize the devaluation," Mahathir wrote in his monthly column which was also printed Monday in Tokyo's Mainichi Daily News.
"If the value of the currency fell by 100 percent in terms of exchange rate, then we would raise income by 100 percent. This would result in the purchasing power remaining the same," he said.
Mahathir, who has ruled the country since 1981, subsequently proposed the plan to the National Economic Action Council, the policy-making body which he formed to engineer Malaysia's economic recovery.
But he said NEAC members -- which included sacked deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim -- protested and rattled off the side-effects on the Malaysian economy, including soaring inflation and a host of other unpredictable factors.
Anwar, who was finance minister at the time, had then been calling for Malaysia to swallow the International Monetary Fund's bitter pill to end recession through austerity and high interest rates.
"My colleagues shot down the plan. So I had to think of other ideas," he said.
Some of those other ideas were implemented in September 1998.
First, Mahathir sacked Anwar, then he imposed controversial exchange controls that rattled international investors. He expanded government spending to revive big-ticket public works projects and helped banks stay in business by reorganizing bad debts.
So far, it's worked and the 74-year-old leader has even received some international acceptance for his controversial programs.
Mahathir's charismatic one-time protege, meanwhile, was arrested weeks after his sacking and subsequently charged, convicted and sentenced to six years in jail for abuse of power.
Anwar, who's currently standing trial for sodomy, insists all the charges against him were trumped up by Mahathir to prevent him from becoming Malaysia's next prime minister.
Mahathir denies the accusations. He said he was at ease with all the difficult decisions he has made thus far.
"On many occasions we have to make radical decisions, and we have been proven to be right," Mahathir wrote. "I have always been able to relax and find sleeping easy."
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