MALAYSIA’S new Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob was sworn in Aug. 21, bringing back the rule of the country’s longest-governing political party. But he faces a tall task in uniting a polarized society and reviving a slumping economy amid a worsening pandemic.

Putting an end to week-old political turmoil in the country, Ismail has become the country’s ninth prime minister and the third prime minister since the 2018 elections.

He was picked by King Al-Sultan Abdullah, the constitutional monarch, to replace Muhyiddin Yassin who declared his resignation Aug. 16 after less than 18 months in office as infighting in his coalition and poor performance in tackling the pandemic and reviving the economy cost him majority support.

The king chose to appoint a new premier based on who had majority support in parliament, rather than call an election, over concerns a vote could worsen the pandemic.

In his maiden address Aug. 22, Ismail pledged to steer the country out of the coronavirus crisis by calling all politicians to find common ground to help the nation recover, in addition to ramping up vaccination efforts.

“Political stability must be swiftly achieved through unity, and this includes cross-party cooperation,” said Ismail, who is vice president of the scandal-hit United Malays National Organization (UMNO).

Ismail, who was the deputy prime minister under the government of Muhyiddin, obtained the backing of 114 lawmakers for a slender majority that brought Muhyiddin’s alliance back to power.

It also returned the premiership to UMNO, which had led Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957 but was ousted in 2018 elections amid a multibillion-dollar financial scandal.

At present, no lawmaker or single political party has a majority in parliament.

Malaysia was plunged into a state of political turmoil in 2018 after then Prime Minister Najib Razak was found guilty of corruption over the misappropriation of state funds.

Ismail had earlier handled several portfolios, including deputy to Muhyiddin and the country’s defense minister, agriculture minister and rural development minister.

He rose to prominence during Muhyiddin’s 17-month administration. Backed by prominent leaders of the party, Ismail can lead the country towards a great future, his party believes.

It must be noted that the newly elected prime minister is likely to face strong attacks from the opposite side due to mismanagement caused by the previous government, where Ismail was the key figure.

“Malaysia has a new PM, with essentially the old politics and players. It’s back to the past: UMNO is now in PM seat,” said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asian expert with Malaysia’s Nottingham University.

Ismail, 61, faces a distrustful public, amid popular anger over the previous government’s inconsistent policies and perceived failure in tackling the pandemic.

Malaysia has one of the world’s highest infection rates and deaths per capita, despite a seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June.

The country’s vaccination rate is one of the highest in Asia, with more than 50 percent of its population having received their first dose of vaccine as of Aug 19.

But the country has also one of the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the region, with the entry of the highly transmissible Delta variant infecting more people. Malaysia has over 1.4 million cases, with more than 22,000 new infections recorded as of Aug. 20, according to the WHO.

“He is the ‘lucky’ PM at an ‘unlucky’ time without strong legitimacy and standing domestically and internationally. He comes in as the least popular PM at the worst time in history for Malaysia,” Welsh said.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has urged supporters to accept the outcome after losing out to Ismail. He said his three-party alliance, which ousted UMNO in 2018 polls, will work harder to win back the people’s mandate in the next general election.

Anwar was due to succeed then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad before their reformist alliance collapsed in February 2020, sparked by the withdrawal of Muhyiddin’s party. Muhyiddin then formed a new government with UMNO and several other parties.

A veteran politician, Ismail was named defense minister when Muhyiddin took power in March 2020, and became the government’s public face through daily briefings on security issues related to the pandemic.

He was promoted to deputy prime minister in July as Muhyiddin sought to appease UMNO, which was unhappy at playing second fiddle to Muhyiddin’s smaller party.

In the end, 15 UMNO lawmakers pulled support for Muhyiddin, causing his government to collapse.

Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, a political science professor at Malaysia’s University of Science, said Ismail’s key challenge is to bring about national unity in a highly polarized society.

“You can imagine the feelings of close to half of Malaysia’s population who voted against UMNO in the 2018 elections, only to see an UMNO PM returning to helm the country just three years later,” he said.

All eyes will be on Ismail as he assembles his Cabinet. Previously Muhyiddin’s Cabinet had been slammed as bloated as he sought to reward allies with government posts.

Welsh said the test would be whether Ismail can step away from mistakes made by Muhyiddin’s government and address serious governance issues.

“The economy is in bad shape, weakened by the former government’s mismanagement. He will have to put in a competent team and move beyond narrow racialized paradigms he has been known for,” Welsh added.

Ismail is currently one of three vice presidents in UMNO, where several of its leaders are facing criminal charges.

When he was elected as the defense minister, many Malaysians doubted his competency because he had no prior experience in the role.

Ismail himself confessed in an interview with NST: “I have no experience as defense minister. I had never been entrusted [with] that portfolio. However, I can always refer to and study ministerial records and decisions made to understand all matters related to the ministry.”

Instead, his training is in the field of law, where he pursued a Bachelor of Law in the University of Malaya in 1980 and wrote a thesis, “Treatment of political detainees in Malaysia.”

He began his career as a lawyer in 1985 before being appointed member of the Temerloh UMNO Division Committee in 1987. That was the start of his political career.

Since then, he has held several different ministerial positions in UMNO governments, including in agriculture, domestic trade, rural development and defense.

He was slammed for supporting the vaping industry, which is dominated by Malays, despite health warnings from the Health Ministry.

One of the notable initiatives he undertook as the agriculture minister was an initiative aimed to get rid of middlemen who profited from the hard work of farmers and fishermen.

Ismail is known for empowering Bumiputera while serving as the rural and regional development minister. Bumiputera is a Malaysian term to describe the Malay race and other indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia, and used particularly in Malaysia.

Under his leadership, his brainchild — the MARA Digital initiative — gave birth to several malls selling electronics.

In 2018 polls, Ismail waved the racial card, warning that every vote for the opposition was akin to eliminating special privileges given to Malays under a decades-old affirmative action program.

His dressing was once the joke of town for wearing colorful batik shirts during his daily press conferences. Viewers even compared his shirts to Ramadan delicacies.

Apparently, his wife is the one who chooses what he should wear based on how well it would match the other things he’s wearing.

He also told NST that he was actually happy to be receiving such reactions from viewers, because he saw it as a positive sign that people were tuning in to the daily press conferences for updates about the latest pandemic control news. (SD-Agencies)