Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

Dato ' Seri Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi (* November 26, 1939 in Kepala Batas ) is a Malaysian politician. He was from 2003 to 2009, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. His nickname is Pak Lah ( so much as "Uncle Abdullah ").

Abdullah is the scion of a powerful family in Penang and made in 1964 with a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Malaya. After his studies he joined the Diplomatic Corps and in 1974 a member of the Malaysian Parliament. In 1982 he obtained the post of a minister in the Prime Minister 's office. He later served as Minister of Education and as defense minister, but was dismissed in 1987 because he identified himself with the breakaway wing of UMNO, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah below.

Abdullah was a member of the UMNO and was successful in the elections in October 1990. He became vice president of the party under his rival Anwar Ibrahim. In March 1991, Abdullah was Foreign Minister of Malaysia, before he was appointed after the fall of Anwar Ibrahim as Deputy Prime Minister in 1999.

On 31 October 2003, Mahathir bin Mohamad handed after 22 years at the helm of the government the post to his deputy Abdullah.

Abdullah was from April 2006 under pressure because he carried out painful reforms in Malaysia; this liberal economic policy came in the predominantly Muslim population of the South East Asian country with little enthusiasm. For example, he reduced the subsidization of gasoline by 40 %, which triggered a price jump of about 17 per cent at the pumps. Since June 2006, the Prime Minister was also used by his predecessor Mahathir bin Mohamad sharply criticized. This particular accused him of strangling by his austerity domestic demand. My party members were unhappy with the poor election results in 2007, in which UMNO lost its two-thirds majority for the first time since independence.

On 3 April 2009 Abdullah handed over his office to his deputy Najib Razak.