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Abdullah Ahmad Badawi: A Malaysian Neo-Conservative?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2012

AHMAD FAUZI ABDUL HAMID  and
MUHAMAD TAKIYUDDIN ISMAIL
AHMAD FAUZI ABDUL HAMID
Affiliation:
School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, [email protected]
MUHAMAD TAKIYUDDIN ISMAIL
Affiliation:
School of History, Politics and Strategy, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Bangi, Selangor, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of changes implemented during Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's administration (2003–09), using the theoretical framework commonplace in studies on conservatism. Based on the premise that transformations in conservative polities are prone to producing conflict, the dynamics of conflict situations during Abdullah's checkered Premiership is foregrounded. As we apply the main criteria defining conservatism to regime behaviour in Malaysia, it becomes clear that such criteria are stoutly held by the regime's elites in their quest for social harmony and political stability. Regime maintenance then finds justifications in such seemingly sublime ends, thereby self-perpetuating Malaysian conservatism. Such despondency prevailed during Mahathir Mohamad's administration (1981–2003), which displayed bias against changes and introduced schemes to justify the systems it upheld. Transmutations wrought during Abdullah's tenure may have been neither substantial nor totalizing, but within the conservative paradigm which had long gripped national politics, Abdullah's deviations were significant nevertheless.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 379 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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87 Shamsul Amri Baharuddin (Professor of Social Anthropology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia), interview, Bangi, 12 March 2010.

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92 Ooi Kee Beng (Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), interview, Singapore, 30 March 2010.

93 Brought into the cabinet by Abdullah following the March 2008 elections, Zaid Ibrahim was entrusted with the task of judicial reform, which was stridently attacked by conservative UMNO forces as embodying the voice of the opposition. Zaid eventually resigned from his ministerial position in September 2008 in protest against recent arrests under the Internal Security Act (ISA). He later joined Anwar Ibrahim's PKR, which he also quit in disillusionment in 2010, and now heads a new party, People's National Well-Being Party (KITA: Parti Kesejahteraan Insan Tanah Air). See an account of his experience in UMNO and Abdullah's cabinet in I, Too, Am Malay (Petaling Jaya: ZI Publications, 2009).

94 Ahmad Ismail earned notoriety in August 2008 for publicly calling the Chinese in Malaysia ‘migrants’. Ahmad Ismail's refusal to tender an apology for his statement caused a rift in Penang between UMNO and the Chinese-manjority GERAKAN party, which governed Penang from 1969 until 2008.

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