Published October 9, 2008

Abdullah to hand over power to Najib next March

Decision comes after feedback he may not get enough Umno nominations

By S JAYASANKARAN
IN KUALA LUMPUR
Email this article
Print article
Feedback

MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi formally declared yesterday that he would not contest the Umno presidency in next March's party polls - effectively stepping down after that.

A lack of delivery: While Mr Abdullah is likely to spend the next six months trying to push through his reform agenda, he will be hobbled by a lame-duck image

He will hand over power to his deputy Najib Razak, 55, and follow the transition plan hammered out two weeks ago by the United Malays National Organisation's Supreme Council.

On Tuesday, Mr Abdullah met up with officials from the intelligence unit of the Defence Ministry, where he is minister. According to insiders from Mr Abdullah's dominant Umno, the officials told the PM and Umno president that he might not receive the minimum nominations (58) needed for a candidate wishing to contest Umno's presidency.

Even so, a steady stream of supporters were at his office and residence beseeching Mr Abdullah not to throw in the towel, and to declare himself as a candidate. Declare your intent, their reasoning went, and the support will come because you are the incumbent. Mr Abdullah, 67, rejected their entreaties.

His departure reflects his realisation that continued resistance could split the party irrevocably. What is less clear is whether it will usher in a sterner government, given that Mr Abdullah's laidback, even benevolent, style of leadership was often misconstrued as weakness.

A decade ago, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi wouldn't have dreamed about ascending to Malaysia's top job. But the fates decreed otherwise. Then premier Mahathir Mohamad sacked his deputy Anwar Ibrahim for 'moral misconduct' and, when Umno demanded that he pick a deputy from among the party's three vice-presidents, settled on Mr Abdullah as the safest choice.

That was in 1999 and it seemed logical. Mr Abdullah was widely perceived as a nice guy, a decent family man with pious Islamic credentials to boot, always a plus in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

In fact, Mr Abdullah's five-year stint as deputy premier was largely forgettable save for a rousing, stentorian address to the Umno General Assembly in June 2002 after Dr Mahathir shocked the crowd by announcing his plans for retirement. In the end, he persuaded Dr Mahathir to stay on until October 2003.

Mr Abdullah took over the premiership in November and, almost immediately, seemed set to change things. He promised a transparent government where open bidding would be the norm, an end to mega- projects and cronyism, and set about tackling the budget deficit by shelving several big-ticket projects that Dr Mahathir had previously approved.

Four months later, he called a snap general election and won the biggest electoral mandate ever given by the Malaysian people to any government since Independence. It was the high point of his leadership.

Things then went downhill. 'Abdullah's story is one of missed opportunities,' says veteran journalist and socio-political blogger Abdul Kadir Jasin. 'He's a highly regarded, lovable fellow who, from his standing in 2004, turned out to be one of the most disliked persons in the country.'

But businessman Jaafar Ismail is less charitable. 'If you want the brutal truth, his tenure has been inconsequential,' he snaps.

Mr Abdullah's problem was delivery, or its lack thereof. He'd promised open bidding for government contracts; it almost never materialised. He said he would eschew mega- projects and yet launched five ambitious development 'corridors' that would entail hundreds of billions of ringgit, funds whose origins remain doubtful.

He had appeared reform-minded, claiming to want to do away with corruption and police abuse of power. He seemed to want to shake up institutions like the civil service and the judiciary. But substantive change was meagre.

It could have been due to what sociologist Farish A Noor calls 'institutional inertia' but it wasn't helped by Mr Abdullah's almost complete absence of follow- up action and his impatience with detail.

Indeed, the prime minister got hoist on his own petard: he built up the people's expectations only to so disillusion them that they almost removed him in the last general election. Then, in the words of Mr Farish, 'he became the leader who lost the most votes, seats and state assemblies in the history of Malaysia'.

Mr Abdullah's image was not helped by Dr Mahathir's savage attacks on him beginning in 2006 with the former premier accusing his handpicked successor of everything from incompetence to outright corruption.

Even in areas where he should have succeeded - Islam, for instance - he could not. Mr Abdullah had sought to promote Islam Hadhari, a progressive brand of religion that sought to bring Islam into keeping with modern life with gender equality and individual empowerment. But it was derided behind his back, and the state- sponsored religious bodies - largely conservative and doctrinaire, to say the least - simply ignored it.

For all that, however, Mr Abdullah increased the democratic space allotted to ordinary Malaysians - an irony, given that it rebounded on him. 'I suspect that many Malaysians will feel grateful to him at some point later on,' says writer and columnist Karim Raslan. 'He removed the fear factor.'

Manu Bhaskaran, the Singapore-based partner of US consulting firm Centennial, thinks history will be more forgiving of Mr Abdullah, who will become the shortest serving premier in Malaysian history. 'He brought in a much needed change of pace and raised key issues that should have been addressed years ago,' says Mr Bhaskaran. 'It's a great pity because he was a decent man who was overtaken by events.'

Mr Abdullah is likely to spend the next six months trying to push through his reform agenda. But he will be hobbled by a lame-duck image. Whether he will be allowed to push his programme through is the question.