INTERVIEW | Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has faced a mountain of resistance over his proposal for a third national car project, including from members of his own government.

Mahathir had expressed his frustration through his typically sarcastic responses, and that frustration showed again in an interview yesterday when Malaysiakini probed him about the matter.

"If you want to be a country of peasants, planting rice and catching fish, okay, we'll do that for you.

"Don't have any industries because industries sometimes lose money, you see? Let's be paddy farmers or fishermen. That's all we can be.

"If you like, if that's what you voted for, okay, we'll do that," Mahathir told Malaysiakini in an interview at his Perdana Leadership Foundation office in Putrajaya yesterday.

For many, the suggestion of a third national car had invoked the bitter bailout which taxpayers had to foot for Proton, the first national car project, as well as the perception that its quality was not up to par.

However, to Mahathir, a national car project, including Proton, was never about just producing cars.

"When a consumer thinks, they think only about buying a car at a lower price for themselves.

"The government has to think about the country, what is good for the country may not be good for individual consumers, but over time, they will prosper," he said.

Mahathir said his goal had always been to increase the engineering capacity of the country and turn Malaysia into a country of producers instead of consumers.

"Malaysia is a country of consumers, they don't know how to produce anything. I went to China, in China, it is not about consumption.

"It's about producing things that they can consume by themselves but not in Malaysia," said Mahathir, who had just returned from his five-day China visit. 

Dr M explains his obsession with cars

The United States has its Intel chipsets to sell to the world while South Korea has Samsung, and Mahathir hopes that Malaysia too, can have something to sell to the world.

According to Forbes, Samsung contributes to around one-fifth of South Korea's gross domestic product. But we asked Mahathir - why the obsession with cars?

"Car industry needs 4,000 parts to make a car. If I give you 4,000 parts and ask you to make a car, you cannot do it. You must learn how to produce the parts, how to fit the parts because when you learn that, you are learning engineering.

"When you know how to produce the components, you can produce components for other machines, components for other cars in other countries.

"You learn a whole load of practical engineering from building a car," he said.

Mahathir acknowledged that there were alternatives, such as building trains, but believed that cars were the better option.

"All over the world, people buy cars more than they buy houses. When you do that, you can achieve volume. When you achieve volume, then the industry will go on.

"Why do we go for the cars? Because the car market in the world is the biggest despite the car being costly because people spend money on cars. In China, (they) produce 37 million cars per year," he said.

The prime minister, when asked how he could ensure the third national car project won't go the way of Proton, blamed the first national car's decline on his successors, for opening up the market to competing vehicle producers.

"I maintain that when an industry is in its infancy, you have to protect it. Japan protected, Korea protected, China is protecting. Even in Germany and Europe, they are protecting indirectly, not through taxes but by non-tariff barriers.

"They protect their product. But we, we open our market to everybody. If you don't believe me, you can go see how many, what kind of cars are in Malaysia, and you can go to any other countries.

"You go to Japan, you don't see any (other) but Japanese car. You go to Korea, you see Korean cars. You go to China, all the cars there are made in China," he said.

'Fading national pride'

Mahathir said the protectionist policies should be scaled back to a minimal only when sufficient progress, volume and quality had been achieved.

"The first Proton car which was produced in 1985 is not like Proton that is being produced now.

"We have made tremendous improvement for a small developing country. Yet, no one appreciates that. Go to any other developing country and find out whether they have a national car or not, they don't. We have.

"But we have no pride at all in our things. We want to buy foreign. You become a consumer society, you will never be rich. All your money will be flowing out," he said.

Mahathir said his aspiration was to develop Malaysia into a capable engineering and manufacturing nation, which may not provide cheap or the best cars now, but "prosperity will go down to the consumers eventually".

"Of course, the consumer is not patient enough to wait for that. They want it now.

"Why should we produce anything at all when we can buy everything cheaper but how do you buy when you don't have jobs in the country?" he said.

However, even if Mahathir can win hearts and minds to start a third national car project, he expects it to take time.

"Malaysia is very slow. When I look at China, my God, within 30 or 40 years, they have achieved far more than what we have achieved, I think in a hundred years, because we are very slow," he said.

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