Modernization And Democracy

Rashid Khashana     Al-Hayat     2003/09/1

Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has decided to leave office next month, voluntarily - and not as a result of a civil coup or external pressure. After taking his country from being an underdeveloped state to an industrial modernized one, the man could have found a thousand excuses to remain at the head of the state until his death, especially since the king's role is only nominal in the Malaysian political system.  

However, doctor Mahathir, who proved to be well educated and deeply concerned by issues related to the Islamic world, gives great importance to democracy in his vision for the rise of Islamic countries, and he believes that the people's assimilation of its principles is a primary and active basis to develop nations. He also believes that a gradual shift to democracy will make it become part of the society's social and intellectual development.

In this context, the peaceful transition of rulers appears to be a basic principle of democracy, if not its core principle, even if Mahathir coupled it with two other factors, which are stability and economic development. He is right, for how is it possible to organize a transition in an environment that lacks stability and could dwindle into a civil war, with the revival of power ambitions? And how could a peaceful transition be achieved when the majority of the people are hungry and only the minority is replete?

What matters is that this leader, who was elected to power and won in the parliamentary elections, then failed then won again, did not squander his country's average wealth on delusional, pompous projects nor did he spend it on his family or tribe. Instead, he led a broad industrial movement that started when he took over the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in the late seventies, leading the share of industrial products to form 80 percent of the Malaysian exports' revenues today, which is a huge accomplishment for an Islamic country that was suffering from underdevelopment.

It is true that Mahathir postponed political democracy to a later stage, and gave priority to economic democracy, meaning a market economy. However, he was firm in bridling the chaotic capitalism and imposed severe limits to preserve the elements of the national economy. Perhaps he believes that the time has come to build political democracy, following the completion of the heavy industrialization stage that took three successive five-year plans and ended in the year 2000.

It has been more than half a century since the independence of many Arab countries, and yet, none of the peoples have yet witnessed any industrialization or democracy. There are wealthy states, which people are hungry, but the revolutionary stations feed them with resonant slogans and hollow predicaments. While Malaysia relied on the Americans to attract foreign investment and achieve industrialization, its government remains committed to a course that differs from the U.S. in dealing with the Islamic world, and does not submit to it in administrating its internal affairs. And if we look at the Arab countries having "revolutionary" projects and that own in their greatest majority substantial human and natural resources, we would find that they are embroiled in endless crises and are locked in a race on who will gain Washington's approval first.

Given the current state of depression in Arab countries resulting from the failure of modernization and the murder of democracy for half a century, perhaps the Malaysian experience could set an example on how an Islamic country can manage to rise without getting out of its shell or refusing democracy's principles under the excuse that it contradicts our identity!