1964-1999 Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir

Mohamad Mahathir (born in 1925) was born into a family of two school teachers in Malaysia. He attended local Islamic schools Sultan Abdul Hamid College in Alor Setar, and graduated from University of Singapore. He studied medicine and politics eventually became the prime minister of Malaysia from 1982 to 2003 which is the record for a prime minister to be reelected. His entrance to the political world was in 1964 when he was elected into a seat in the lower house in Malaysia. From there he went on to be elected into the Supreme Council of United Malays, only to be briefly kicked out after the publication of his debate sparking book, “The Malay Dilemma” in 1969. The book showed his true thoughts and ideas on race, and managed to spark many anti-Chinese riots around Malaysia, for it was a well known fact that he used the Chinese to advocate better rights for the Malaysian people.  Unable to deal with the civil unrest, the SCoUM used many of Mahathir’s plans and eventually allowed the renowned politician back onto the council. Once he was elected to the head of state, he took no time in changing the way Malaysia was directed. He started giving more jobs and political opportunities to the majority of the people in Malaysia at that point, those who lived in poverty. Mohamad took up the slogan of, “Look to the East” and began to model Malaysia after Japan and South Korea, as well as telling people to reject their colonial past and look toward the future.

Some of Mohamad’s ideas were shocking to other countries around the world. A number of his thoughts on human rights were alarming to past US leaders but Mohamad has proved many times that he supported Americas war against terror even with his Islamic background. He even threw a large amount of Islamic fundamentalists, Chinese nationalists into jail in 1987. While Mohamad outwardly rejected all western ideas such as democracy or the ability to speak freely, most of his ideas reflected on his upbringing when he was able to rise through the social classes which is more of a western idea. While there is a king elected every five years who theoretically holds all of the power, the prime minister is actually the one in charge of most of the decision making. Mohamad Mahathir had no problems with challenging the royalty on the King’s ability to veto in 1983. While he lost the challenge, he managed to obtain more rights for the legislatures to override the King’s veto. He also took the weak Malaysian economy and set up debt reduction guidelines of the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, and was able to declare the Malaysian recession over by 1999.However, Mahathir's popularity severely declined over the years due to allegations of abusal of human rights as well as suppression of dissent