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Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim went on a tear in Parliament this week, riffing on old corporate scandals.
These were his takes, of course.
And with Anwar — as with most politicians, past and present — his words are not entirely accurate.
Still, it was a revealing exercise.
Answering a question on the “corporate mafia,” the PM decided to play historian, reaching back to the corporate restructuring of the late 1990s.
This was during his own political fallout, and the shake-up that followed the 1996-97 Asian financial crisis (AFC).
Anwar named three companies whose owners, he said, were forced to sell.
He implied this was the work of an unnamed former finance minister “who had influence and deep pockets.”
He never said the name, but it was plainly the late Daim Zainuddin.
And the PM was referencing the major banking consolidation Daim undertook as finance minister to address a post-AFC Corporate Malaysia.
Daim and Anwar had a complicated relationship, one that curdled into something acrimonious by the end of Daim’s life, with Anwar’s own government prosecuting him.
The rivalry between Anwar, Daim and Mahathir Mohamad shaped Malaysia’s political economy, and its aftershocks still decide who rises and who is squeezed in Malaysian business today.
The three names Anwar raised in parliament were Lim Thian Kiat, Abdul Rashid Hussain and Tong Kooi Ong.