Asia Times: Reading Brunei's tea leaves



	March 3, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Reading Brunei's tea leaves
By Bradley Martin

''Reading tea leaves'' used to be the term for what China-watchers based in Hong Kong and abroad had to do in the three decades following the communist takeover of the mainland. The regime in Beijing eventually loosened up some, but next-door North Korea remains as secretive as ever - a country whose foreign analysts are limited to (more or less educated) guesswork.

And then there's Brunei. If it doesn't rank up there with North Korea in the opacity stakes, the oil-rich sultanate of nearly 300,000 citizens still has managed to keep its internal affairs largely shrouded in mystery. That's partly because very few foreign reporters have made their way there, of course. But it's also because those who have gone there have found, in many if not most cases, a lot of tightly zipped local lips.

In that light it's interesting to examine reports of twin news events in Brunei late last week. First came the release of a government-sponsored economic study that said the country needs to double its economic growth rate to keep up with population growth - or face serious unemployment problems. Just pumping oil won't cut it, the report said bluntly. The next day came an announcement that the government was suing the sultan's spendthrift younger brother, Prince Jefri, for improper use of state funds, and freezing his assets at home and abroad.

Observers starved for detail were tempted to see all this public airing of dirty linen as Brunei's version of glasnost. A Reuters analysis (from the agency's Kuala Lumpur bureau) quoted a Western diplomat in Brunei's capital as marveling (by phone): ''It's not the way Brunei operates normally, to have things openly discussed.''

Indeed, it did seem refreshing to get, especially from Reuters and the South China Morning Post (no dateline), more than we usually get on Brunei in the reporting categories of who, what, when and where - and even some valiant attempts to answer the toughest of the reporter's five ''W'' questions, why. But in fact there is something missing in all the stories that I saw. That's the one H: how.

We aren't told with any precision how forces trying to reform the economy and go after Prince Jefri for his prodigal ways managed to pull it off at this time. Was the sultan himself, who serves as head of both state and government, the driving force? If not, who pushed him? And how?

There are clues. The economic report, although said to have been ''commissioned'' by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, was issued by the National Economic Council, which is headed by the sultan's other younger brother, Prince Mohamed.

Then again, the move against Prince Jefri was signed by Hazair Abdullah, the permanent secretary to the Office of the Prime Minister. The sultan himself is the prime minister.

The Reuters analysis mentions, toward the end, that ''Prince Jefri's associates say the prince is a victim of Muslim conservatives seeking tighter control over the sultanate, and predict that feuding will eventually undermine the monarchy.''

Then were Muslim conservatives flexing some newfound muscle in these two big moves? One reason to suspect they might have been is that Prince Mohamed himself has the reputation of being a straight-arrow Islamist.

The South China Morning Post's story about the economic report says Prince Mohamed's ''appointment as National Economic Council chairman further underlines his elevation to become the favored heir, ahead of the disgraced Prince Jefri. Prince Mohamed is also foreign minister.''

To a considerable extent the notion that Prince Mohamed might eventually bring to Brunei the tropical equivalent of rule by ayatollahs arose out of earlier claims by people around Prince Jefri that Mohammad had shadowy ''advisors'' from Libya and Iran. (No names that I've seen.)

Earlier reports also said Jefri was tight with Pehin Haji Abdul Aziz, the education minister and supposedly the most powerful conservative in the country. After details of Prince Jefri's massive mismanagement of the Brunei Investment Agency came out two years ago, reports the SCMP, Aziz increased his portfolios by becoming Jefri's replacement as head of the BIA.

That takes us to the final sentences of the SCMP story, which say that Aziz has now been replaced in that BIA job, ''without explanation, by one of the sultan's most trusted aides. The new BIA head is Yahya Bakar, permanent secretary in the prime minister's department and head of the anti-corruption department.''

If Aziz got unceremoniously canned, then it's not looking too much like a silent coup d'etat by Islamists. So who got the ball rolling? Well, we learn that the National Economic Council, although headed by Prince Mohamed, was ''advised by members of the private sector''. According to the Reuters tally these included committees of bankers, accountants, retailers, shippers, energy experts, construction executives and tourism industry representatives.

A tentative reading of the tea leaves, then, might suggest that business interests and the permanent bureaucracy banded together and got the attention of Prince Mohamed and, eventually, of the sultan himself - who, the SCMP notes, dropped from Asia's richest man to third richest in last month's annual rankings by The Australian newspaper.

But pour out those leaves one more time and we might get a different reading.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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