'Nice guy' Abdullah steps out of the shadows
Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi seems to face a daunting task - filling the shoes of a man many times his political stature. Yet it is a challenge that most Malaysian second-in-commands have risen to and mastered.
Among the exceptions was Anwar Ibrahim, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's anointed successor until mid-1998, when the deputy began agitating for the leadership. He was charged with sodomy and corruption, found guilty of the former and jailed, and Mr Abdullah installed in his place.
Rising to power under such circumstances must be difficult for a former bureaucrat widely known as 'a nice guy'. Apart from his stint as foreign minister, most Malaysians know little else about him.
Yet that does not seem to worry them. They expect Dr Mahathir's policies to continue for some time yet.
The problem was that the tradition of a Malaysian deputy prime minister was to maintain a low profile and follow the order of his leader to the letter, political scientist Farish Noor said last week.
'Every deputy has been compliant, quiet, kept their cards close to their chest and not shown themselves until they came to power,' said Dr Noor, a researcher at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin and associate fellow with the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.
'Mahathir was like this. Nobody expected him to last more than two decades.'
Dr Mahathir, as deputy prime minister, had never tried to upstage the prime minister, but as soon as he came to power, immediately embarked on a project to reinvent Malaysia.
'We don't know what Badawi is going to do and this would be in keeping with the Malaysian political tradition,' Dr Noor said. 'We're going to have to wait for the man to come in to see what he's going to do.'
Mr Abdullah, 62, was born on the northern island state of Penang. His father was, like Dr Mahathir, a founding member of the dominant party in the ruling National Front coalition, the United Malays National Organisation.
He earned a degree in Islamic studies and worked for the civil service until his father's death in 1978, when he embarked on a political career and entered parliament. Under Dr Mahathir, he has held the posts of education, defence, foreign and home minister.
Malaysian political analyst James Chin Ung Ho, a professor at the University of Papua New Guinea, said there were two schools of thought about Mr Abdullah - that he was a seat-warmer or that he was hiding in the shadows and would emerge with his own policies when Dr Mahathir had gone.
'There's no such thing as a 'nice guy' in Malaysian politics,' he said. 'What is meant by that term is that he is cleaner than a lot of other politicians in terms of business interests.'
Observers generally believed Mr Abdullah knew little about government-business relations, economics, finance and trade, the cornerstones of Malaysia's success.
Senior lecturer in international business and Asian studies at Griffith University in the Australian city of Brisbane, William Case, said a team of advisers had been assembled and Mr Abdullah was said to be making an effort to make up for his shortcomings.
'He is capable of making unpleasant decisions and he can be tough, as evidenced by his term as home minister and willingness to sign detention orders under the Internal Security Act.'
Observers agreed, though, that Mr Abdullah's true character would emerge only when Dr Mahathir had fully left the political scene.
