Oleh/By		:	DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD 
Tempat/Venue 	: 	TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 
Tarikh/Date 	: 	19/04/85 
Tajuk/Title  	: 	TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 




Ladies and Gentlemen, 

My speech is entitled: Holier Than Thou -- a Mild Critique. It springs
from the need for a leader from the Third World to say a few words about
the First World, some of whose leaders and many of whose commentators and
analysts continue to be patronising and unduly critical of us in the
developing world. From their high pulpits they sermonise. From their
comfortable armchairs they preach. And in the columns of their newspapers
and in the pages of their books they lecture, expound, declaim on all that
is wrong with the Third World.

2. In my address I will more than imply that those who are without sin
should cast the stones, that those who live in glass houses should ponder
the state of their walls before they venture forth. Those who hurl abuse
at the Third World ought to make sure that they speak from premises that
are fair, assumptions that are correct, knowledge that is grounded in
fact, understanding that is not steeped in ignorance and arrogance.

3. Jean Paul Satre wrote in 1961: "Not so long ago, the earth numbered two
thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men and one thousand
five hundred million natives. The former had the Word: the others had to
use it.The European elite undertook to manufacture a native elite. They
picked out promising adolescents: they branded them, as with a red-hot
iron, with the principles of western culture. After a short stay in the
"mother country" they were sent home, whitewashed. These walking lies had
nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from
London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words... and some where in
Africa or Asia lips would open. It was the "golden age".

4. He continued: "It came to an end; the mouths opened by themselves; the
yellow and black voices still spoke of our humanism but only to reproach
us without inhumanity. We listened without displeasure to these polite
statements of resentment, at first with proud amazement. What? They are
able to talk by themselves? Just look at what we have made of them! We did
not doubt but that they would accept our ideals...." Jean Paul Satre
exaggerated. But by how much? The world that he talked of was the world of
Western domination, then of decolonisation, of the previous hundred years
and of the first quarter century after the Second World War, which
witnessed the greatest period of liberation in the history of the world. I
do believe that we have now seen the second great wave of decolonisation,
mental and psychological decolonisation, when the Third World has already
begun to think not only for itself, but also to evolve its own systems,
and its own values, drawn from the wisdom of both east and west, from deep
within its indigenous soul as well as the external intrusions.

5. I hope that the second wave is reflected in this speech, a speech I
have been advised not to deliver, for fear of the international press, for
fear of the international trade union movement, for fear of the strength
of the strong in today's commonwealth of nations. What I say will, I fear,
be distorted, taken out of context, misquoted and miscontrued. I will
please neither the Right nor the Left. I will please neither friend nor
foe. I will not please the First world, certainly. And I will not please
even the Third World.

6. So why do I enter the lion's den? Why do I deliver this speech that is
so unpalatable. I believe I must because it is time for the First World to
come to terms with the new Third World - something it cannot do from high
among the clouds. For me it is part of the breaking of the chains of steel
that cabin the minds of most Third Worlders and that crib our character
and our faith in ourselves. I believe that this Oxford University is a
good place for the exchange of some home truths.

7. Let me make certain things clear from the start. Let me make plain the
point of departure, the context in which my remarks are set. Let me stress
that I am no apologist for the Third World, of which my country is a
member. I make no defence of the obscenities that take place in many
developing countries, the failure of many of their governments, the
profound weaknesses of many of their societies. I am no admirer of the
Second World. I am deeply committed to the free enterprise system as a
means for uplifting the multitudes from the indecency of poverty. And I
fully believe that the West has given much to this planet in terms of
political culture, in terms of the techniques of production, in terms of
civilising values whose relevance and importance will conquer much that
lies in their path.

8. No critique of the West should start without such an
acknowledgement. But there is much that the West will try to give to us
that is not altogether relevant, that is inferior. There is also much that
the West can learn from the political culture of others, from the
techniques of production of other societies and from the civilising values
of the East and the Third World.

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

9. In 1978 there appeared a book of outstanding accomplishment, written by
Edward W. Said called "Orientalism". It was a work which analysed the ways
in which the West discovered, ivented and sought to control the
East. "Orientalism", Said argues, is, among other things, a style of
Western thought and a body of Western belief, conventional wisdom and
prejudice contributed to by innumer able Western poets, novelists,
statesmen, philosophers, administrators, political theorists, economists,
social scientists and intellectuals in general over the ages to the
present day.

10. Central to Orientalism is the idea of European identity as a superior
one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures. Let one
Malaysian now mount a minor assault against this bastion of conventional
assumption, a conventional assumption that is the more pernicious because
it is an assumption that is still dominant in many countries of the Third
World itself.

11. The Orientalism that Dr. Said so meticulously chronicled in his book
consisted of the sin of half truth added to half truth, misperception
heaped on misperception to yield in some instances total untruth and
complete misperception. There are elements of this in the Neo Orientalism
of our times about the Third World. You all must know, of cource, of the
Third World that is generally a place of teeming millions, of mass
poverty, of rampant corruption, of totalitarianism, arbitrary rule,
authoritarianism, of anti-democratic regimes, of leadership by the few
over the many, of oppressive exploitation, of chronic instability, of
ethical degradation and moral decadence? 

12. But do you know that there are more Whites than Blacks in the Third
World? Rich people are never called "teeming masses" of course; there are
in fact more people per square foot in New York's Park Avenue or some of
Paris' choice places of residence than in the slums of Calcutta. There
apparently are no "teeming millions" in Japan although Japan has more
people per square mile than does India, with all its "teeming
millions". Many countries in the Third World have higher per capita
incomes than Britain or the United States. There are increasingly large
numbers of citizens of the Third World who see more and more countries of
the First World as the residence of ethical degradation and moral
decadence.

13. When I think of some of the present conventional wisdoms about the
Third World, I am reminded of what Lord Cromer said of the Oriental and of
the Oriental mind. In the thirty-fourth chapter of his two-volume tome
which sets out the majestic record of his awesome experience and
magisterial achievements, entitled "Modern Egypt", Lord Cromer quotes Sir
Alfred Lyall as having told him once that "Accuracy is abhorrent to the
Oriental mind. Every Anglo-Indian should always remember that maxim." 

14. Cromer concurs. He says: "Want of accuracy, which easily degenerates
into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the Oriental
mind." So please bear this in mind, ladies and gentlemen, as you listen to
me.

15. In stark contrast, Lord Cromer says: "The European is a close
reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he is a
natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by nature
sceptical and requires proof before he can accept the truth of any
propostion; his trained intelligence works like a piece of
mechanism". Admittedly this remarkable piece of wisdom is from the good
old days and is fashionably discredited by the West now. But it still
influences and afflicts the Western mind.

16. Let me interject that we in the colonised world were indeed fortunate
that not more Europeans studied logic. What would the world have been had
all Europeans gone to Oxford to study logic! Let us savour more of the
wisdom of Lord Cromer, of whom Balfour said: "Everything he has touched he
has succeeded in". Cromer, who emerged as the paramount consul-general of
the British Empire of his time, continues: "The mind of the Oriental, on
the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in
symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. Although the
ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of
dialetics, their descendents are singularly deficient in the logical
faculty. They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions
from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth. Endeavour to
elicit a plain statement of facts from any ordinary Egyptian. His
explanation will generally be lengthy, and wanting in lucidity. He will
probably contradict himself half-a-dozen times before he has finished his
story. He will often break down under the mildest process of
cross-examination." 

17. I quoted Lord Cromer at some length so that you will understand why my
reasoning will be of the most "slipshod description", why my explanations
will "generally be lengthy and wanting in lucidity", why I will contradict
myself half-a-dozen times before I am through and why I will break down
under the mildest cross-examination. My simple proposition to you is that
the moral voice of the West, the legitimacy of its preachings, would be of
a different order if it were not guilty of many of the crimes and many of
the vices for which it has lashed and will continue to berate the
developing societies of the Third World.

18. For example, the Third World is constantly being criticised for their
systems of inequality, for their unfair distribution of wealth, for the
non-egalitarian character of their states. I concede that many are guilty
on all counts. But is the West quite as innocent of these charges as it
makes out to be? Let me take the example of the United States, a proud
country which has many things to be proud about.

19. In the United States, one estimate is that one fifth of one percent of
the American population own almost 60 per cent of the wealth of
America. The super-rich, less that two per cent, own 80 per cent of all
stock, 100 percent of all state and municipal bonds and 88 percent of
corporate bonds. In the United States there are some sixty billionaires
and more than 100,000 millionaires. Two hundred companies account for some
80 percent of all resources used in manufacturing. If you will allow me to
quote Newsweek, not one of my favourite magazine, "the top 20 percent of
Americans owns 80 percent of all that can be privately owned in the United
States and the bottom 25 percent owns nothing (many of them, in fact, have
debts that exceed their assets)." It is true that many Americans own
shares. But the many own very few and the very few own a great many.

20. If there is constant talk that in Third World countries a few families
corner massive wealth, and massive political power, something that is of
course unjust, let us not forget that the DuPont family in America
controls eight of the forty largest defence contractors and grossed over
US$15 billion in defence contracts during the Vietnam War. The DuPonts are
said to control ten billion-dollar corporations including General Motors,
Coca Cola, Boeing and United Brands. Over a million Americans work for the
DuPonts, who are said to be the biggest contributors to Republican
presidential campaigns.

21. Even more powerful than the DuPonts are the Rockefellers. They are
said to control five of the twelve largest oil companies and four of the
largest banks in the world. At one time or another the Rockefellers or
their close associates have occupied the offices of the President,
Vice-President, Secretaries of State, Commerce, Defence and many other
cabinet posts, the Federal Reserve Board, the governorship of several
states, key positions in the CIA, the U.S. Senate and the House of
Representatives.

22. I do not agree with the Marxists who believe that bourgeois
democracies are merely systems in which parties and parliaments provide
camouflage for capitalist rule. But just as it can be no surprise that
trade often follows the flag it can be no surprise if political power
often follows economic wealth.

23. How about the poverty and the income gap that we hear so much about in
the preachings of those who are holier than thou? The University of
California completed a study in 1975 which showed that one million
American babies and young children were suffering from brain damage from
malnutrition arising out of extreme poverty. Black Americans, who only
form 13 percent of the US population make up some 40 percent of those
below the officially designated poverty line. To quote Newsweek again, in
1977 the richest 10 per cent of American households received 26.1 per cent
of total American income while the poorest 10 per cent received only 1.7
per cent. Lest the British say "we are different," let me just add that in
the UK, the bottom 10 percent earn 2.1 percent of total income, while the
top 10 percent earn some 25 per-
cent of all income. In the United States, Blacks generally earned 69
percent as much as Whites; women who worked full time earned only 56
percent as much as men. In a land of plenty, almost one out of every ten
Whites and nearly one out of every three Blacks, Puerto Ricans and
Chicanos lived below the poverty line.

24. To be sure, poverty and income gaps in most developing countries are
generally a great sight worse, but the top ten percent of all US
households received 15 times as much income as the bottom 10 percent. Lest
other states in the First World look askance at the American situation,
the ratio for Japan was 10, the ratio for West Germany 11. And the honour
for the highest degree of inequality among the industrialised countries
went to France.

25. The question that I would like to ask is what are you doing for your
poor? Why are you spending so much on prestigious projects and
weapons? 26. Let me now turn to the hallowed ideal of equality under the
law, and the rule of law, principles that rightly are hallowed and that
are violated in many Third World countries. Let me ask of the First World,
how often is crime defined, in a continuous fit of absent-mindedness, as
something which the have-nots commit against the haves? In how many
countries is legal service something which best serves those who can best
pay for it? Who gave preventive detention to the Third World? And how many
of the civilised countries of the West would introduce it if the
conditions demanded it? Is there preventive detention in Northern
Ireland? And let us not forget that twice, in two World Wars, the British
(in my view, justifiably) suspended general elections.

27. What happened to Nixon and his band of merry men? Resignation was
enough punishment for the leader. Herbert Kalmbach, Jeb Magruder and John
Dean were handed sentences of between four to six months. Richard
Kleindienst, once Attorney General, the highest legal officer in the land,
who was guilty of perjury before a Senate committee was given a thirty-day
suspended sentence and a $100 fine. And a commendation for distinguished
service from an American court. By and large the high and the mighty are
spared.

28. Having caused so much offense thus far, let me now tilt at the
towering windmill of the Western media whose power over the minds of the
entire world is so massive and so utterly pervasive. As a Third Worlder I
ask: Why must this entire planet be seen from the Western, Orientalist
perspective? Why must the Third World be judged day in and day out only
according to the self-righteous values of the West and its media? Why must
so much sheer arrogance and sheer ignorance wreak so much havoc on the
Third World? Is Freedom of the Press, a value which I have been taught to
treasure, nothing more than the right of a few editors and a few owners to
censor and to decide what we all should read, listen to and watch? 

29. Let me turn your mind to the bastion of the Freedom of the Press, the
United States. I have read in a book published in 1977 -- no doubt it is
an exaggeration -- that five New York banks own controlling shares in
America's three national television and radio networks: NBC, CBS adn
ABC. I have also read -- and no doubt this too is an exaggeration -- that
the magnificent five are also powerful shareholders of the New York Times,
Time, Columbia Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. In 1972, only four
percent of American cities had competing newspapers under separate
ownership. The trend is ever downward.

30. Another writer, this time writing in 1983, argued that twenty American
corporations control more than half the 61 million daily newspapers sold
every day; twenty corporations control more than half the revenues of the
country's 11,000 magazines; three corporations control most of the
revenues and audience in television; ten corporations in radio; eleven
corporations in all kinds of books; and four corporations in motion
pictures. In this no doubt jaundiced view, fifty Americans control more
than half the information and ideas that reach 220 million of their
countrymen. It has been argued, no doubt wrongly, that the primary
function of the media is to make money for their owners.

31. One must of course never forget the thousands of professionals who
actually do the editorial work. To forget and insult them is to risk the
gravest consequences. They are the men who vet, headline and determine the
slant. They can literally make or break people and organisations. Indeed
whole Governments can be brought to their knees by the people who
determine what and how events should be presented in the media. Incur
their wrath and you will pay a very high price indeed.

32. Why, one wonders, did it take a year and a half for the My Lai
massacre story to see the light of day? Could it have anything to do with
the fact that two wire services, several American magazines and news
weeklies, one TV network and several major newspapers in Boston and New
York turned down and simply were not interested in the dull story of how
hundreds of defenceless old men, women and children were slaughtered in a
village in Vietnam? I shall not tell you about the objective views of the
Western media on the Arabs since we all know that they consider them as a
bunch of shiftless and untrustworthy malcontents.

33. Having offended the Right, let me now turn to offending the Left and
making some remarks about Freedom. Personal freedom is of course a value
of all peoples, Brown, Black and Blue. As someone who struggled against
the British, as someone who spent many years in the political wilderness,
I need no lecture on freedom. Many colonial peoples need no lesson from
our former oppressors. But it surely ought not to come as a surprise to
you that there are hundreds of millions, indeed billions, who believe that
an Economic Bill of Rights is even more important that a Political Bill of
Rights. It ought not to come as a surprise to anyone that to those who
hear the growls in their stomach and who feel insecure, prosperity,
development and order come before being able to go to the polling booth
every few years, writing letters to newspaper editors, raising voices in
the air and assembling under the trees, newsworthy attractive though some
of these things are.

34. Let me also say that freedom from oppression is more than freedom from
the tyranny of the government; it must also mean freedom from the tyranny
of particular interest groups and movements, and sometimes the tyranny of
the minority. Governments need to be checked and put in their place. Power
cannot but have a corrupting tendency. But Governments cannot contribute
when they are cowed and intimidated. In how many countries in the West are
governments cowed by the power of the military-industrial complex, in
timidated by the big money men, browbeaten by trade union leaders,
harrassed and terrorised by the Press - so intimidated in fact that they
are deflected from doing what is necessary and what is just. After 1933,
the majority of the governments of Western Europe knew that war was on the
horizon. Why did they not re-arm, thus possibly preventing a mad man from
bringing untold misery to the world? They were defeated by public opinion
largely preformed by the media and the knowledge that the steps that were
necessary would not be approved by their electorates.

35. Let me now turn to the really big one: the constant criticism that the
Third World does not practice democracy and the constant pressure for all
of us to adopt the system of "participatory democracy." Let me state quite
categorically that I am in favour of democracy, of government of the
people, by the eople, for the people. At the same time, I believe that in
practice, each nation must seek its own path to democracy. Neither the
British form of democracy nor the American form of democracy - two
distinct and different forms of democracy - can be exported whole and
installed, ready made, in a very large number of countries. What a hue and
cry there would be in Britain were the Americans to force their particular
brand down British throats. What a big shake-out and a big shoo-in at the
top of the civil service every time a new President is elected? Judges to
be chosen by the people? Non-members of the Commons to be chosen as
Ministers of the Crown? A clear division of powers between the Executive
and the Legislature? An end to party discipline? Heavens.

36. Harvey Wheeler, in his book, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Democracy,
published by the American Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions,
wrote: "During the nineteenth century, America made a great commitment to
a special, and indeed historically unique, form of democracy. It backed
its gamble with some of the most indigenous governmental and political
institutions known to history. Today, these institutions of populism and
progression have been all but dismantled. They appear embarrassingly
Victorian in retrospect like those monuments of Victorian architecture we
are now busily tearing down.

37. "However, it is harder to eliminate beliefs and institutions than
buildings. We still carry the participational commitment in two
ways. First, a few of the institutional arrangements we developed to
facilitate democratic participation are still with us, though often
atrophied or modified. The direct primary (election) is the most prominent
example.

38. "Second, and more important is the fact that even though in one part
of our minds we realise that our participational experiment has failed,
and even though we sometimes ridicule it, nonetheless as a nation we still
hold to it, myth though it is.

39. "Participational democracy is the only really distinctive contribution
America has made to politics and we seem fearful of admitting its
failure. When we state the basis of our opposition to Communism, it is
that Communism does not provide for democracy as we have understood it,
and therefore is not a "true" democracy.

40. "But the democracy we foist on others is one we ourselves no longer
have. Despite our inner knowledge that our own participational forms no
longer work, we continue to base our cold war on the claim that the
non-Western World should adopt these forms forthwith, and when we look at
the political systems of the newer democracies in the underdeveloped areas
of the world, one of our chief criticisms is that they are not
sufficiently participational as in our special Victorian sense." 

41. It may surprise you, but I do believe that Wheeler overstates. But let
us look at voting in the US primaries, one of the few remnants of what he
calls participational democracy. It is by no means unusual to find less
that 20 per cent of registered voters turning out to vote. Let us take the
US Presidential elections: This time around, 89 million Americans out of a
total voting population of 174 million went to the polls, i.e. around 51%,
a drop from 1980's 53 percent. Out of the 89 million, President Reagan won
52.6 million votes. Since the population of the United States was 235
million, this means that only 26 per cent of the American people actually
and actively chose Mr. Reagan. If these figures appear exceedingly low, it
should be noted that voter turnouts for Congress are substantially lower,
and turnouts for elections at the lower level are very much lower again.

42. To what extent can a government be said to be elected by the people
when so few go to the polls? And what do we find when we break down the
ranks of the electors? In the 1980 presidential election there was a 33
percent difference between the percentage of high school certificate
holders and degree holders who voted. In all the Western democracies, the
main abstainers are the working class, which is the way most Western
commentators, with their love for participatory democracy, prefer it to
be.

43. To what extent can government be said to be of the people when the
costs of running for office are so high that it must be out of reach of
the common man? In 1968, it cost an estimated $100 million to elect a
President from beginning to end. Were Lincoln alive today, he would be in
his log cabin tweedling his thumb.

44. To what extent can government be said to be for the people when wealth
and money are so important and when pressure groups, which generally cost
so much money, play such an important part in the functioning of the
modern western democratic political system? A most major flaw in the
pluralist democratic heaven of the West is that the heavenly chorus sings
with a strong upper class accent. The pressure system is what determines
most political outcomes and the vast majority of the people of the Western
democracies do not have the money to get into the pressure system. The
unorganised and the disorganised have a say once every four or five years,
and as we have pointed out in many countries in the West, most choose not
to have that say. For the most part, in these countries, the bargaining is
between a presidium of elites.

45. Please allow me to end by outlining to you one or two thoughts on good
government, good leadership and good political systems. I do agree that
the real virtue of democracy lies in the fact that despite its awesome
imperfections it is generally better than other systems, whose
imperfections are generally even more awesome. Raymond Aron is right when
he says that it is impossible to conceive of a regime that is not
oligarchic in the sense that decisions cannot be taken by all but by the
few. What makes a democracy different from other systems of governance is
that in a democracy the governing oligarchy regards those whom they govern
as their sovereign. It is a singularly important difference.

46. The type of democracy that is right for a particular country depends
of course on the particular conditions that pertain. If in the United
States the Republicans and the Democrats worked on the basis of strict
party discipline as the parties of Britain do, government would only be
able to function effectively if the man in the White House were to be of
the same party as the one that has a majority in Congress. The American
system only works, to the extent that it does, because the Republicans and
the Democrats are not disciplined parties in the British sense. On the
other hand, if a British Cabinet were to function in the context of
undisciplined parties, as the American Executive does, you can imagine how
much attention will be devoted to courting every Member of Parliament and
how little attention will be given to the task of governing. There will be
many more opportunities for ambitious men to apply for the job of Prime
Minister, as governments come and go, although it would be somewhat naive
to believe there would be a drop in the number of applicants.

47. The much touted two-party system can only work if the adversaries are
agreed on the basics and are not poles apart. Imagine the chaos that would
result from the vacillation from a rampantly socialist party to a
rampantly capitalist party and back again. Imagine the dislocations that
would take place if every four or so years a country would have to veer
from being an absolute theocratic state to one utterly secular. I should
also point out to you that democracy and authoritarianism may not only
live in peaceful coexistence. In fact many authoritarian regimes have been
the expression of the democratic will, freely exercised. Many
authoritarian governments have been elected by the will of the people, who
want strong, no-nonsense administration.

48. The real challenge to all who believe in democracy is how to balance
between the procedures of democracy and its content, between the differing
competing wishes of the people, between what the people want and what
needs to be done. The real challenge also lies in preventing the tyranny
of the majority and the tyranny of minorities. How are political rights to
be balanced against economic rights? How are rights like personal freedom
to be harmonised with such community rights as order and security? The
moral, just and effective way in which these challenges are to be met must
vary according to the givens of the given systems.

49. Ladies and gentlemen, in this world today there are ultra-stable
societies, ultra-unstable societies, and those societies which have been
stabilisied in various states of potential instability. On the criterion
of task, there are also essentially three types of
societies: maintenance-needy societies in which the main business lies in
ensuring business as usual, reform-needy societies in which there is a
need for reform over a broad front, and revolution-needy states where
there is a need for system tranformation of the most fundamental kind over
the most comprehensive front. To insist that the requirements of
leadership within ultra-stable and ultra-unstable states are the same must
verge on insanity. To insist that leadership forms, style and content in
revolution-needy and maintenance-needy states must be identical or even
similar is ludicrous.

50. There is no denying that there are evil men and evil forces in many
countries today. But there are many more good men grappling with difficult
problems in impossible situations. It is not becoming of the comfortable
to afflict the afflicted, to scorn the efforts of many men in many lands
who are trying their level best, in the best way that they know how, to
pull their people up by their bootstraps.

51. Ladies and gentlemen, you have listened patiently to this lengthy,
unlucid, contradictory presentation of views. I am now ready for your
cross-examination.