Dr Mahathir Mohamad's extensive term in office has been a unique exercise in the application of political will not to impose an individual over a nation, as his critics aver, but to imprint an idea upon it.

We now call this idea 'Vision 2020', and all Malaysians should read and memorise its succinct and luminous founding document, Mahathir's "The Way Forward" speech of February 1991.

As the most workably optimistic exegesis of the New Economic Policy, instituted to remake Malaysia after the communal breakdowns of the 1960s, Vision 2020 is as good as it gets from here.

Just as it was with the NEP, however, the easiest stage of any national development strategy is the first stage: building things. History may look back on what Mahathir achieved as fairly basic: he built modern Malaysia. Our roads and highways (and seven of every 10 vehicles upon them); our railways, ports, and airports; our new industrial plants and spreading conurbations - all were borne on his ambition.

Mahathir managed all this while navigating Malaysia through one political challenge after another, including the constitutional amendments governing the monarchy and the judiciary, and the deregistration and resurrection of his own party, before finishing off by getting us through the concurrent calamities of the regional financial crisis and the Anwar Ibrahim rebellion.

How he did it we all know and history will document and anatomise in minute detail. How we made it is more intriguing. How did we do it? How was it possible for a Malaysian like me, for example, to have had the surreal honour of greeting Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh at the newly opened National Art Gallery on Jalan Tun Razak in late September 1998, while three kilometers away, as the crow flew, it was flying blind through tear gas dispersing the crowds massing in support of the sacked deputy prime minister?

Sidestepping pitcalls

There is something profound in our catchy little exhortation, "Malaysia Boleh!" The past two or three decades seem to have honed us into a sort of stylish resilience. Among the things "Malaysia

Can Do" is sidestep insouciantly past pitfalls that routinely swallow other nations whole. We are held together in our chronic cultural disarray by a certain gallows humour and clear-eyed realism. In Malaysia, after all, even the most horrific highway pile-up raises the possibility of lucky numbers.

Among the first things Mahathir told the foreign media upon becoming prime minister 22 years ago was that in Malaysia, everyone had to be a bit unhappy. Should anyone be too happy, someone else would be too unhappy. Social stability as a function of equitable unhappiness was as brutally frank a diagnosis as he ever made. Someday, Mahathir's outspokenness may be recalled with fond nostalgia. What is astounding now is how he stayed "on message" for 30 years. The career he began in earnest in 1969 with his challenge of Tunku Abdul Rahman and the book he wrote the following year, 'The Malay Dilemma', ends last October still on song and in tune.

Mahathir declared his intentions long ago, and fulfilled as much of his promise as he could. He declared himself a failure in his effort to change the "mindset" of the Malays, but what he could do, he did with a single-minded vengeance, the like of which we are unlikely ever to see again.

The Malaysia we know today has been assembled on a Build-Operate-and-Transfer basis. Mahathir built it, and now he is handing it over to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to operate, and eventually transfer to his own successor. The grand sweep of Mahathir's generation-long stewardship of Malaysia comes down to the four challenges he leaves Abdullah (he actually cited them as the things he had failed to complete).

Return to meritocracy:

With 30 years of preferential educational policies having led to the mediocrity of the privileged and the ill-will of everyone else, racial quotas on college entry have been repealed. Initial results have not indicated any drastic drop in the number of bumiputeras qualifying for tertiary education. On the contrary, many young Malays have welcomed the chance to regain the respect of their non-Malay compatriots, who had collectively developed an ill-concealed contempt for the apparent ease with which Malays could acquire the trappings of education without necessarily proving their merit - even as non-Malay examination results soared through sheer pressure of necessity.

Promote the English language:

A generation ago, the most useful legacy of Malaysia's colonial history was set aside to encourage the maturation of the national language, Malay. The usage of both languages swiftly deteriorated in tandem. This has given a backhanded push to restoring the use of English, not as a capitulation to 'Western dominance' and 'globalisation', but as a necessary device for arresting the closing of the Malaysian mind.

Curb corruption:

'Money politics' has scourged the ruling parties in the past decade. The blatant cynicism with which Umno, in particular, was reduced to a one-stop shop for handouts and party favours famously drove Mahathir to tears, and was a cancer in the Malay body politic. If progress has been made against money politics, at least some of it is measured in the precocious wisdom of the party's younger new members, who now say it's better to make your money before entering politics.

It has to be said, however cynically, that Malaysians are prepared to pay a price in principle for peace. Most seem more concerned by incompetence than the infamous troika of "corruption, collusion and nepotism" that toppled neighbouring Indonesia's President Suharto in early 1998, and which Anwar Ibrahim then sought to rope into service in his own "reformasi" movement against the Mahathir administration.

After the past generation's experience in seeking expedient results at all costs, Malaysians seem to have grown inured to the costs of getting the job done - as long as the job gets done quickly and well. It's not the kickbacks and palm-greasing that Malaysians most despise, but the incompetence that sees such venality leading to massive losses and government bailouts anyway.

Eliminate extremism:

Mahathir's position seems to be that he would like to see PAS obliterated as a political force in our country. That is unlikely to happen, but acting decisively against any tendency among Malaysian Islamists to nurture murderous fanaticism accords entirely with the "zero tolerance" for political violence Malaysia has practiced all its life. Socio-politically, Islamism has been a dominant bugbear of the Mahathir administration, which has invoked Malaysia's cultural diversity against the efforts of PAS to change our government into a theocracy.

Pak Lah's tasks

These are the tasks Dr. Mahathir bequeaths Pak Lah, who will determine how to manage them. Critically, the style of governance in Malaysia is going from magisterial to managerial.

As Malaysia's fifth prime minister and his party's sixth president, Abdullah is an icon of the continuity that has been Umno's most cherished achievement, and Malaysia's distinguishing political feature.

He will do his best, of course. He always has done this; even when it has cost him dearly. Having spent three years in the political wilderness himself, and returned to Mahathir's Umno Baru for the sake of the party more than the man, Abdullah will as dutifully set himself to operate the Malaysia that Mahathir built.

To achieve his objectives, Abdullah will be able to tap the services of not just one but two generations of Malaysian talent (albeit expensively cultivated and still thin on the ground). Pak Lah has the affection of younger Malaysians. He has the goodwill of Umno's Youth and Puteri wings.

He also has more mature resources available: Malaysians under 50 who were trained by national policy away from politics and into the technocracy, management, and the professions, in which many have spent the past 10 or 20 years hunkered down in low-profile but high-intensity careers. As a consequence, out of the transformative turbulence of the Mahathir years, a quieter, more expert brand of senior Malaysian may emerge.

Across the board of the nation - in corporate governance, the civil service, and the institutions of state as much as in commerce, industry, and the media - there will be greater reliance on top management to ensure their corporations profit, prosper, and progress on the political capital so dearly invested in the new Malaysian economy.

Might this mean a more collegiate administration under Abdullah? Perhaps.

Many are chary of the reappearance of a clubby corporatocracy such as emerged under Daim Zainuddin's husbandry of the national economy. But that turnkey approach to entrepreneurial development didn't breed only turkeys. The Malaysia-Inc companies that survived the upheavals of the late 1990s now do better, and the lessons learned in the catastrophes that befell the worst-run of them will not soon be forgotten. Chief among them: the objective of business is to make a profit, and don't let any presumptive nation-builder tell you otherwise.

The importance of sound management has come home to roost. In the throes of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, top Malaysian managers were shaking their heads in the awful realisation, as one of them put it, that "everyone minds their own business, so no one knows the whole picture". There isn't much to be said for being even the biggest, tallest, and healthiest tree, when the forest is on fire.

This was another problem of life within the secure embrace of a strong and protective administration. There was short-sightedness and complacency. There was the blithe conceit that someone was watching over what we could not see. When the sky indeed fell, Chickens Little and Pollyannas alike were equally done in. For this reason, we can expect transparency in the next administration as a simple function of the more consultative manner in which it is likely to operate.

This will have advantages and disadvantages. Pitting the former against the latter will be Abdullah's unique challenge. Observing that he will not be "another Mahathir", as so many are wont so glibly to do, is fatuous. Mahathir himself could not do what Pak Lah has to do, which is to lead Malaysia out of Mahathir's era and usher it along towards 2020.

Umno's true test

Pak Lah's own term as prime minister will not see the completion of the journey Mahathir began. In what will be Umno's true test of its viability for the century to come, that will come with Pak Lah's successor, Najib Abdul Razak.

What follows, according to precedent, will be a brief "honeymoon" for the new administration, during which Pak Lah will be free to stamp his imprimatur on the job before going to the people for a mandate. Mahathir enjoyed just such a "honeymoon" after inheriting

the premiership with the retirement of his predecessor, Hussein Onn, in July 1981. By the time Mahathir went to the national polls in August the following year, he had instituted some of his most populist initiatives.

He had introduced name-tags and punch-cards to straighten up government servants. His "Look East" and "Buy British Last" policies began changing traditional Malaysian mindsets. He unified

Peninsular Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak by the simple expedient of adopting the same time-zone. And he vociferously pledged to the people a "Clean, Efficient and Trustworthy" government.

Malaysian voters rewarded him with 62 percent of the popular vote, the biggest electoral victory in a quarter-century, affirming Mahathir as the nation's leader and clearing the way for his more radical goals of re-engineering the institutions of state and setting new directions for the national economy.

The outcome of the 2004 general elections, which statutorily must be held before November next year but may well take place several months earlier, will strongly influence Umno's subsequent decisions on its own leadership.

How the fledgling Abdullah administration fares thereafter will hinge on whether the Malaysian electorate returns the desired verdict. The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition should comfortably retain its two-thirds majority of the newly expanded 219-seat Parliament, but the target is closer to three-fourths of those seats. (The BN's control of Parliament reached the peak of a four-fifths majority in the 1995 general election.)

The fate and fortunes of PAS are especially critical. Umno wants to win back Terengganu, lost to the Islamist opposition in the 1999 general election as much because of the Anwar affair as disgruntlement with an unpopular state administration. Kelantan, PAS' heartland, may be secure for them but will still allow Umno some inroads. The electoral verdicts in the "borderline" states of Kedah, Perlis, and Pahang, however, will be barometers of PAS' prospects under the Abdullah administration.

PAS supporters have resisted Mahathir's depiction of them as deluded and dangerous deal-breakers of the multiracial national contract. They think Abdullah will be less combative and more accommodating of religious politics. They may be right about the rhetoric but wrong about the resolve.

As Malaysia sets to work on its fourth generation as an independent nation, after all the pioneering, visioneering, and re-engineering, it is time now for manageering. Mahathir Mohamad messianically launched Malaysia and the Malays out of the past. Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will have to shepherd them along to the promised future.

What lies beyond will be another story, but if Pak Lah has his way, the next five years in Malaysian governance should be clean, efficient, and trustworthy.

Tomorrow: Ong Kian Ming - Chinese-in-a-Box?: The future of Chinese parties

KS Jomo's Dr M has much to answer for?

REHMAN RASHID, a former associate editor of New Straits Times, will be rejoining the newspaper later this week. The above is an excerpt from a article which appears in 'Reflections: The Mahathir Years'.

'Reflections' contains a collection of essays of over 40 authors reflecting on the Mahathir era in areas such as domestic politics, foreign and defence policy, the economy, society, public health, the media and the arts. It offers fresh perspectives on the changes during the last 22 years and points to some of the key challenges for the future.

The book will be launched this Saturday (Jan 17) at 4.30pm in Bilik Wawasan, Rumah Universiti, Universiti Malaya.