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If he had moved with haste and commitment immediately after March 2004, there is little chance that anyone in Umno could have stood in his way. The Malaysian Insider
So it's done. After talking about it for the last five years, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has managed to put in place the infrastructure to fight corruption in Malaysia. It was not a walk in the park, sure. He had to plead, cajole and on at least one occasion show outright displeasure at the ability of some of his Cabinet Ministers to speak through both sides of their mouths. Several Ministers told The Malaysian Insider that at a recent Cabinet meeting, Abdullah was peeved with talk that by pushing through the reforms - Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Bill and the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill - he was seeking to burnish his own legacy and was unfair to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who would be occupying the top post in a few months. "The PM reminded the Cabinet that all these reforms were on the table for a while and the Cabinet had unanimously endorsed the MACC and JAC. He said that if any Ministers did not agree, they were free to step down, '' said a Minister. It is understood that Najib also rubbished talk that the reforms belonged solely to Abdullah. At a meeting this week with Barisan Nasional MPs, the Deputy Prime Minister reminded the lawmakers that the reforms reflected the wishes of the rakyat. Looking back, Abdullah was forced to put up with more resistance and had to plead his case more passionately because he found the will to walk the talk on reforms at his weakest, politically. If he had moved with haste and commitment immediately after March 2004, there is little chance that anyone in Umno could have stood in his way. He was all powerful then, with more than 90 per cent of the country backing him and Umno in his pocket. Even then, party officials warned him that his window of opportunity to ram through drastic changes would be open for six months. After that, the forces of establishment - the civil service, political warlords, corporate captains - would re-group and oppose any change which would weaken their grip on power and patronage. He was cautioned that if he kept procrastinating on his reforms, he could risk the danger of not having anything concrete to show voters when he sought a second mandate. But the doomsayers were not taken seriously by a Prime Minister who enjoyed an approval rating which only dipped below 65 per cent twice in his first term in office. Truth be told, Abdullah also realised that his party men were not big on his reforms early on and he did not want to alienate them. If nothing else, Abdullah Badawi is a party loyalist. How he is viewed by Umno matters to him more than anything else. He lived in fear of rejection by his party, to the extent that he was willing to put his reforms on the backburner.His view was that he would win over the party and manage their expectations and then go full throttle on reforms in the second term. By his reckoning, he would use the momentum of the second mandate and would push through reforms on corruption and the judiciary. But the best-laid plans can often go awry. He never received the strong mandate from the electorate on March 8. Indeed, he was weaker than any other Prime Minister in history, with the loss of the two-thirds majority and five States to the Opposition. With a weakened position, Abdullah was forced to use some of the tools he was loathe to employ during his first term. He cajoled, pleaded, threatened and flashed his temper. If only he had done this four years ago…
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