KUALA LUMPUR: One month after taking over from Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is coming across as a caring populist promising to eradicate corruption, improve public service and narrow the gap between the people and their leaders.
Essentially, Abdullah is promising the same deal Mahathir had always offered this country of 21 million people — development, racial peace, special status for Malays and Islam and a fair share of wealth for all — except that he would do all these and more but at the same time combat corruption, promote transparency and make leaders accountable.
The day after he assumed office on Oct 31, Abdullah visited his hometown in Penang where over 10,000 people lined up to greet him. He told the cheering crowd: “I have inherited a successful and highly developed country made possible by Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s policies. I pledge to continue these policies.”
“Work with me, not for me,” Abdullah told the people.
Since taking over, Abdullah has hit the road, visiting farmers, factory workers and fishermen in remote corners of the country, thumping shoulders, eating with them, praying at village mosques and promising a more caring and more accountable government.
In the capital, he takes off on surprise visits to notoriously corrupt and inefficient departments, talks to people lining up for service and demands that civil servants account for delays and grouses on the spot.
Abdullah is a picture of soft-spoken and smiling humility, choosing his words with great care to avoid offending listeners. At one government department, for instance, members of the public gave him a standing ovation. But critics like Lim Kit Siang, chairman of the opposition Democratic Action Party is of the view that Abdullah can convince Malaysians only by taking action and not just making promises.
“Despite numerous promises he has not taken action to eradicate corruption and promote transparency,” Lim said. “He might end up holding the record for highest number of undelivered promises.”
Skeptics also argue that despite Abdullah’s humility in public, cold calculation shapes everything he does because his promises have been made under the full glare of television cameras are given prime time airing to shore up his image.
A day after taking office, Abdullah installed a new police chief — a man widely known to fight corruption and abuse of power in the police force — taking into consideration rising concern about a sharp rise in rape, violent crime and death under police custody.
Later Abdullah did not hesitate to send to prison, and without trial, 13 students who were deported from Pakistan on Nov 15 for suspected Islamic militancy. Muslim groups and human rights activists protested this, but Abdullah said police needed to detain the students to probe their alleged links to the Jemaiah Islamiyah militant group.
A week later, Abdullah freed 15 people held without trial under the Internal Security Act for alleged Islamic extremism, saying the men have been rehabilitated. He won kudos from the Islamic party PAS and rights activists.
Another action that was greeted with mixed reaction was the sacking of Abdullah Ahmad, editor of the government-controlled ‘New Straits Times’newspaper on Nov 25.
Abdullah is also looking to get a convincing victory in the upcoming general election expected before next June. —Dawn/The InterPress News Service.