KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is set to announce the end of his career as national leader tomorrow, had a rather plain and unexciting career as an inoffensive, unambitious and likeable man who was promoted into power by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who had wanted a plodding short-term successor.
Abdullah is leaving largely because of the huge damage done by his former benefactor turned nemesis, and by the rejection of his half-hearted reforms and other failures by voters at the March 8 general election.
He leaves behind dreams unfulfilled, his reforms unrealised, his grand economic corridors in limbo and his friends and political supporters unguarded and exposed.
It is a heavy price to pay for indecisiveness — the key character of his five-year-old administration that is best described as a "flip-flop" — a phase made famous by the country's blogging community.
Abdullah first came into the public eye as a young, long-haired man often pictured sitting near luminary Tun Abdul Razak after the riots of 1969. Some of the black-and-white photographs issued by the Information Department capture the young Abdullah's intense admiration for Razak.
Abdullah was assistant secretary in the Public Services Department when he was selected as assistant secretary to the National Operations Council that was headed by Razak to rule the country following the suspension of parliament.
He was later made the director-general of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in 1971 and deputy secretary-general in 1974. He left government service in 1978 to pursue a political career and was elected Umno supreme council member in 1981, and Umno vice-president in 1984. He was in the wilderness after backing Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah during the 1987 Umno crisis but was brought back by Dr Mahathir in 1991 as foreign minister, a post he held without stepping on Dr Mahathir's toes, until 1999.
Abdullah made a name for himself as a technocrat in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when Malay society valued technocrats as people who could off-set the Chinese dominance of the economy.
It was the time when dozens of government corporations were set up to help Malays catch up — from the modernisation of fisheries and agriculture to helping them pack, transport and market their produce.
It was that time when the evils of the "middle men" were a key concern of Umno and people like Abdullah, who excelled in committees and understood the bureaucracy, made a name in the momentum sparked by the need to "catch up."
Abdullah managed to make a name and enjoy an impact in Umno without actually putting his name to any major, transformational policy — a true mark of a committee-man.
Later on as prime minister, Abdullah formed dozens of task forces on issues and many of these were headed by his deputy Datuk Seri Najib Razak until it became a joke.
After Abdullah was made Education Minister and then Defence Minister in the mid-1980s he was considered prime minister material but other big names stood in his way i.e. Tun Musa Hitam and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
Although Abdullah sided with Tengku Razaleigh in the 1987 crisis, he did not challenge Dr Mahathir and because of that and his inoffensive character, he was rehabilitated and returned to the Cabinet in 1991 a year after the climatic 1990 general election that saw the BN narrowly defeat the Gagasan Rakyat opposition coalition.
It was Abdullah's bland, inoffensive nature which had a calming effect on Umno and saw him promoted to the deputy Umno presidency to fill the vacuum left by the sacking of then Umno deputy president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The same qualities saw to it that Abdullah was selected by Dr Mahathir as Umno president when he decided to quit in 2003.
Another reason to pick Abdullah as successor at that time was the fear of a resurgent fundamentalist Islam which many at that time believed would soon overwhelm the country.
It is interesting that the man who made a name as a technocrat in the 1980s, successfully reinvented himself as an Islamic scholar by the later 1990s to become a later day champion of moderate Islam.
He even formulated his own moderate brand, Islam Hadhari, to counter Pas. Everything came together — fear of fundamentalist Islam, Abdullah's father figure and promise of reforms, the departure of Dr Mahathir — to give Abdullah the biggest ever political mandate in 2004.
But after that he relaxed, eased into a stupor and exhibited his panacea — indecisiveness.
"His ineffectiveness came to a point where many people just could not believe their eyes. It is as if he really believed by not deciding, the pressing problems would go away," said a leading human rights lawyer.
The same voters who had welcomed him in overwhelming numbers in 2004 turned against Abdullah on March 8, sending a clear, unambiguous signal that his time was up.
He will be remembered as a pleasant man who simply did not have the skills nor the gumption to rule despite winning the biggest mandate in history and occupying the most powerful office in the country.
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