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Pak Lah or Mr. Clean, as he is informally known, is the prime minister of Malaysia. He is responsible for an Asian economic tiger that has been a model for the past two decades for most of Asia. Badawi is also the president of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the largest political party in Malaysia, and leads the governing Barisan Nasional Parliamentary coalition.
Abdullah, 63, was born into a prominent family in the northern state of Penang.
His father was a founding member of UMNO, which sealed Malaysia's independence from British colonial power and is still the country's ruling party.
After earning a degree in Islamic studies and working for a period in the civil service, Abdullah entered politics upon his father's death, being elected to parliament in 1978 as member for the Kepala Batas constituency in Penang.
He quickly rose to prominence, holding the jobs of minister of education and defense, before being appointed foreign minister in 1991.
Since coming into power as prime minister, Abdullah has promised to clamp down on corruption, giving more power to anti-corruption agencies and making it easier for the public to reveal corrupt practices to the authorities. He has also arrested several public figures from the Mahathir era on charges of corruption, a move which was widely applauded by the public. He has advocated an interpretation of Islam known as Islam Hadhari, which maintains that Islam and economic and technological development are not incompatible.
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