Why Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamed Upped The Ante Against India

(Times of India)

NEW DELHI: Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed’s decision to step back from escalating a diplomatic row with India may have its roots in domestic politics and Mahathir’s own political legacy.
In the past a couple of months, Mahathir accused India of “invading and occupying” Jammu & Kashmir and railing against India’s new citizenship laws. His remarks invited swift retribution from New Delhi, with the Indian government taking the unprecedented step of curbing refined palm oil imports from Malaysia. India is the world’s largest importer of palm oil and Malaysia the second-largest producer. Per the most recent assessment by Bloomberg, Malaysia stands to lose about $1.4 billion worth of exports if India were to just go back to 2018 import levels.

Why did Mahathir do it in the first place? According to analysts here, it’s part of Mahathir’s own domestic politics, although, as things turned out, he may have overstepped his limits.
Although Mahathir heads the Pakatan Harapan coalition that rules Malaysia, his PPBM party holds only 26 seats in parliament, which gives him weaker negotiating powers. Instead, Anwar Ibrahim’s DAP has 42, PKR holds 50 and Amanah holds 11 in the coalition in the 129-member parliament. According to the original deal, Mahathir was to have made way for Anwar to take over, but has shown little signs of doing that. Most recently, Mahathir has promised to step down after the APEC summit in November.

Mahathir, therefore, has been trying to negotiate for himself a greater space. He has been quite vocal on Malay interests in domestic arenas, highlighting the infighting among the coalition members, lack of economic and political reform, which was one of the reasons the coalition came into power in the first place, defeating the corrupt regime of Najib Razak. He also wants to secure the political future of his son, Mukhriz Mahathir, which might require some internal deal-making.
Second, according to Malaysian media reports, Mahathir is angling for a political alliance with the Islamist party PAS, which holds 18 seats in parliament. Mahathir has been traditionally at daggers drawn with PAS, since he held a secular constituency. But reports say he reckons that a pact with PAS could give him 44 seats, weakening Anwar Ibrahim, who is disliked by the Islamists.
That could be why Mahathir has been highlighting Islamic issues globally, from Kashmir to Palestine, as well as hosting an alternate Islamic summit in December. Whether this works or not is unclear, but, it could backfire on two counts.
India’s decisive action directly hurts the interests of over 600,000 Malaysians who live off the palm oil business, particularly, if Indian buyers move to Indonesia. That is a sizeable chunk of his voting public. Second, over 10 per cent of Malaysian voters are of Indian origin, mostly Hindus and Sikhs. They don’t want to see Malaysia at odds with India, despite losing out over the Malay-first policies of Malaysian governments. These Indians are reportedly also upset at Mahathir giving shelter to Islamist preacher, Zakir Naik, who is wanted in India, and who has been making incendiary speeches against Hindus and Indians generally.
Both these are large and important political constituencies. Mahathir overstepped his bounds, and India’s actions made him acutely aware of the problems therein. That, say Malaysia analysts, could be behind Mahathir backing down somewhat from his earlier truculent remarks.
Malaysian ministers have reached out to the Indian high commissioner in Kuala Lumpur to resolve the problem. Indian officials denied that there would be any meeting between Malaysian and Indian officials in Davos, though Malaysia had hinted at it.
The question now is, how far would India want to take this row? India has made it clear now that it will strike back if its core interests are disturbed, and Kashmir is a core interest. Sources in the government say it’s a step that needed to be taken and showed that India was willing to back up its positions with actions on the ground. But with Mahathir apparently stepping back, India might wait a while to call a truce.