Albright’s Counterpunch

At a time when the United States is too concerned with tiptoeing around despots and tolerating tyrants, it was refreshing to hear Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s blunt retort to a Malaysian official who tried to compare that nation’s politics to politics in the United States.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s heavy-handed policies elicited direct criticism from Vice President Al Gore as well as Albright during their visits to Kuala Lumpur. Their message was direct and unequivocal--contempt for Mahathir’s attempt to silence his critics.

Perhaps Mahathir had gambled that since he is host of this year’s annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, the United States would avert its gaze from his government’s imprisonment and prosecution of the reformist former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. But demonstrators have taken to the streets, and Albright and other foreign officials have met with Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

To try to save face, Rafidah Abdul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister of international trade and industry, compared Albright’s visit with Anwar’s wife to a foreign official meeting with special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr. The comparison was absurd and Albright snapped back, “He is not in prison!”

Albright held firm in declining to hold any bilateral meetings with Malaysian officials.

Gore went into more detail in expressing the U.S. criticism. In a speech outlining new financial initiatives for Asia, he again put the spotlight on Mahathir’s turn against Anwar--once his heir apparent--and his other authoritarian ways by praising the democratic reforms backed by Anwar and his supporters.

Will a miffed Mahathir make a wiser Mahathir? If his past is any indicator, no. The Malaysian leader has been quick to blame others for his economic problems, and he has been an ardent critic of the West. That’s his right, both in his own country and if he came here. The difference is that in the United States, his views wouldn’t put him behind bars.