Rather, a report in Southeast Asia Global magazine says, countries and large firms throughout the world are spending heavily on lobbying firms to gain influence in Washington.
Lobbying, a practice of paid advocacy in which interest groups seek favour with lawmakers, typically members of Congress in the US, is legal but can have shady connotations.
The report said in the past lobbyists were mostly employed by mega corporations but in recent decades foreign governments had realised that retaining Washington-based lobbyists could be an effective way of bending US decision-makers to their agendas in areas such as trade, internal politics, human rights and international prestige.
Foreign governments spent USD106 million for this purpose in 2013, according to Sunlight Foundation’s Foreign Influence Explorer, a website that collates lobbying contracts.
The Southeast Asia Globe found that in the past 10 years alone at least USD14 million had been spent on US-based lobbyists by Southeast Asian governments and public bodies, based on data from the Foreign Influence Explorer website.
However, it said, this figure was most likely a fraction of what was actually being spent by the region’s governments, as the data only comprised formally disclosed lobbying contracts and did not include payments channelled through consultancy firms or government-friendly private bodies.
The report said Southeast Asian governments appeared more interested in “nation branding.”
It said that between 2001 and 2002, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who, in 2006, was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption and illegal lobbying, reportedly received USD1.2 million from the Malaysian Government to bolster the nation’s image amongst US officials and to arrange a meeting between then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and US President George W Bush.
The meeting took place in May 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported years later. Mahathir, the report said, had denied the money came from his government.
The report quoted Karminder Singh Dhillon, a former lecturer in the University of Malaya’s Department of International Studies, as writing about the deal in the book Malaysian Foreign Policy in the Mahathir Era: “From being criticised as being autocratic, anti-Semitic, a jailer of political opponents and anti-free market… all of the sudden, Mahathir’s Malaysia rose from the low ebbs of its international images to sit on the pedestal of the model Muslim nation worthy of an ally.”
The report said, to boost their nation’s visibility, governments often paid lobbyists to get the media and bloggers to write positive stories about them.
It said between 2008 and 2011, US-based blogger Joshua Trevino was reportedly paid almost USD400,000 to write opinion articles extolling the Malaysian Government and attacking the country’s political opposition, particularly Anwar Ibrahim. Trevino was not paid directly by the Malaysian Government but by APCO worldwide, which, the report said, had been hired by Putrajaya for an alleged USD20 million to manage its international image.
Trevino, it said, subcontracted 10 bloggers and journalists to write similar articles. Later, the report said, Trevino’s funding came from Fact-Based Communications, a UK-based production firm, which was accused of producing propagandistic current affairs documentaries for CNN, CNBC and the BBC whilst in the pay of the Malaysian Government, as well as other foreign governments, corporations and NGOs.
Government’s even use think-tanks to improve their public image.
In 2005, the Washington Post reported that for much of the 1990s, Washington-based think-tank the Heritage Foundation had vehemently criticised Mahathir’s rule. However, in August 2001, Heritage Foundation financed a trip to Malaysia for three members of the House of Representatives. It also issued briefings to Congress with a more positive slant, the report said.
According to the Washington Post, the think tank’s “new, pro-Malaysian outlook” emerged at the same time as a Hong Kong-based consultancy firm, co-founded by Edwin Feulner, also president of the Heritage Foundation, began representing Malaysian business interests.
According to the report, the Malaysian Government bestowed the title of ‘Datuk’ on Ernest Bower, with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, for his contribution in influencing policy in Washington.
The lengthy report also gave examples of other countries in Southeast Asia which had hired lobbyists in Washington to improve the image of the ruling government or the country.