Anwar Ibrahim: Tenacious in Dissent, Hopeful in Power

【Product Information】

Over 50 years Anwar Ibrahim was a Malay nationalist student, a motor of Islamic activism, a co-opted rising star in government, an ‘anointed successor’ to the premiership, a persecuted reformist, and a revitalized Opposition Leader. He disdained comfortable irrelevance to rouse indignant masses against the regimes of five prime ministers. In September 1998 he was a political prisoner with a blackened eye. In November 2023 he became the Prime Minister. In the 21st century, his anti-corruption campaigns fought ruling power structures that fused state, regime, and party. His politics used his charismatic and chameleonic personality, and his complex ideas on Islam, a humane economy, coalition politics, and a reimagination of society. He outmaneuvered his influential ethno-religious opponents through a parlous condition of Malay politics and now leads a large Unity Government of which the deposed hegemon, UMNO, is only a subordinate partner. This book explores how a tenacious but hopeful Anwar seeks to transform society at an unsteady moment in Malaysian politics.

【Author Information】

Khoo Boo Teik

Professor Emeritus, the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, and Research Fellow Emeritus, the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba, Japan. He was born, bred and schooled in Westlands Primary School and the Penang Free School, Penang, Malaysia, before taking his degrees from University of Rochester, MIT, and Flinders University of South Australia. He is the author of Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad, Beyond Mahathir: Malaysian Politics and Its Discontents, and other books, mostly on Malaysian politics and society.

【Table of Contents】

Abbreviations
Preface

1. Fighting Hegemony: A Template of Dissent
Prison connections
Will the real Anwar stand up?
A moment of hegemony
Lurching in crises
A template of dissent
Terminating Mahathirist hegemony
A legacy of Reformasi

2. Charisma, Chameleon and Identity
Fascination with charisma
Of being a chameleon
Identity in flux
Aiming for renaissance

3. Islam: Faith in Search of Problems
Decolonization and the duty of social criticism
Progress and the direction of transformation
A step from succession
Before the split
Confronting democracy, freedom and governance

4. A Humane Economy Between State and Market
A halcyon decade
Ambivalences in euphoria
Years of drought
A new dawn of a moral economy
A humane economy
Awakenings and alternatives

5. A Populist Reimagination of Society
A populist persona
Leadership and coalition
Rage against the machine
The spectacularisation of failure
In the presence of a populist uprising
Struggles to reimagine society
Rethinking nation

6. Unrealized Transitions of Power: Origins and Consequences
The mobility of fathers and sons
Divergent paths
Succession strife
The first failed transition
A second flopped transition
Betrayal by the elites
Dysfunctional changes
UMNO’Ss defeat
Mahathir’s final failure
The innocence of the plebeians

7. An Ascension in Confusion
Parlous Malay politics
Continuing problems
Down time for the Malay-Muslim front
Parti Keadilan Rakyat: living with uncertainty
Power play over premiership

8. Parameters of a New Governance
Malaysia Madani: ideological basis of a new order
Highlights of a populist budget
Reflections on the transformation of politics

9. Epilogue: The Spectre of Anwar Ibrahim
No more template of dissent
Malay divisions and six state elections
The spectre of Anwar Ibrahim

Bibliography
Index
About the Author