Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has set his succession plan in motion for his deputy Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to take over the helm in October next year.

In the next 15 months, the premier will allow Abdullah to slowly assume the top posts in the party and government.

Arguably, Mahathir could be regarded as the most successful prime minister of the country. He has, with his vision towards development, spearheaded the nation into one of Asia's most successful developing countries.

Mahathir has held the office of Prime Minister since July 1981 upon the retirement of Tun Hussein Onn son of the founder of Umno, the late Onn Jaafar.

Born on Dec 20, 1925, Mahathir is the youngest son of nine children. His mother, Wan Tampawan, was a Malay while his schoolteacher father, Mohamad Iskandar, was of mixed parentage of Indian Muslim and Malay.

He married Siti Hasmah Ali in 1953 and has four sons and three daughters. The 76-year-old politician is the longest serving premier in Asia, after Indonesia's Suharto and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew retired from active politics.

Suharto served as president from 1968 until he was ousted in 1998. Lee was prime minister from 1959 to 1990 and remains as a senior minister in the republic's Cabinet.

Mahathir's appointment as the fourth prime minister, marked a breaking point from the country's past as his political career, unlike his predecessors, was not shaped by British rule.

He is the first prime minister to be educated locally, rather than in the United Kingdom. And unlike past leaders, he is a doctor, not a lawyer, by profession.

Sacked from Umno

During his early years, Mahathir earned the reputation of being a rebellious young Turk within Umno.

After losing his parliamentary seat in the 1969 general election, Mahathir wrote a critical letter to first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and accused him of siding with Chinese Malaysians and betraying the Malay community.

In return Mahathir was accused of Malay chauvinism and was expelled from the party by Tunku.

In the political wilderness, he authored a controversial book entitled The Malay Dilemma on the economic backwardness of the race from the socio-genetic perspective.

When Tun Abdul Razak became the second prime minister in 1970, Mahathir was readmitted to Umno.

He was re-elected to Parliament in Aug 1974 and then appointed education minister. In 1976, he was made the deputy prime minister when Hussein Onn (left) took over from Abdul Razak.

The early years of Mahathir's administration were noted for his effort, along with his deputy Musa Hitam, to promote a more 'clean' work culture and liberalise the government's control of independent institutions.

Curbing the media

However, since the mid-1980s, analysts sensed a shift in his administration following curbs on the country's media and civil movements.

In April 1987, his Umno presidency was challenged by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the then trade and industry minister and retained the post by a narrow margin. By this time, Mahathir had a new deputy in the form of party veteran Ghafar Baba who replaced Musa who had resigned due to his indifference with Mahathir.

In Feb 1988, after a High Court decision declaring Umno illegal due to existence of 'phantom branches', Mahathir set up Umno Baru (New Umno).

In the same year, Lord President Tun Salleh Abas was sacked from his post. The previous year hundreds of activists were detained under the controversial Internal Security Act; fuelling speculation that both the incidents were related to the Umno leadership crisis then.

Mahathir also initiated yet another constitutional amendments, in 1983 and 1993, to curb the powers of the Malay rulers, sparking a deep divide among the Malays over the loyalty to their respective Sultans and the government.

When Mahathir underwent a heart bypass surgery in 1989, questions were cast on his political future. But the premier subsequently secured a fourth term in the Oct 1990 general election.

Mahathir was also noted to have led Umno and Barisan Nasional to a resounding electoral victory in 1995, where the ruling coalition won 162 out of the 192 parliamentary seats.

In Nov 1995, the premier said he would hand over his post, but not in the following year when the Umno election was held to his successor and protege Anwar Ibrahim who had replaced Ghafar as the deputy prime minister and deputy Umno president.

Mahathir has often been associated with the country's economic growth of over eight percent for close to a decade since 1990. He had also strengthened ties with Third World leaders, particularly those from African nations.

On local front, he changed the face of Malaysia by building mega projects. The country gained some international recognition for its world's tallest building, an impressive structure of road system, international calls ports and a futuristic international airport, the Multimedia Super Corridor for technology firms and an entirely new administrative city in Putrajaya.

Vision 2020

In 1991, the premier unveiled 'Vision 2020' a masterplan to turn Malaysia from a developing country into an industrialised one in less than three decades.

This was followed by his ambitious project to turn Malaysia into a regional IT hub by setting up its own Silicon Valley the Multimedia Super Corridor, a 15km-by-50km strip south of Kuala Lumpur stretching from the KL International Airport to the Petronas Twin Towers.

However, in 1998, Mahathir's reputation suffered an overnight setback when he sacked Anwar in September on charges of sodomy.

The fiery orator, who was renowned both domestically and internationally as an intellectual as well as a devout but moderate Muslim, claimed that his ouster was a conspiracy spearheaded by Mahathir.

For weeks, he rallied the public to stage mass demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur against the sacking as well as to call for the premier's resignation. He was later detained under the ISA and subsequently charged.

Anwar is currently serving a 15-year jail sentence for corruption and sodomy.

Cronyism and nepotism

It was during this period that Mahathir came under heavy criticism for bending independent institutions such as the press and the judiciary to his will.

The premier was also taken to task for 'cronyism and nepotism' where government projects and licences were said to be given to selected businessmen and relatives in his circle under the patronage network of Umno.

A year earlier, Mahathir had blamed foreign currency speculators, namely George Soros, for the Asian financial crisis. He also lambasted Western countries for aggravating injustices in the free market.

A day before Anwar's sacking, the premier, who had refused aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), defied traditional economic principles and announced the pegging of the ringgit.

Although it evoked much criticism, the pegging proved to be a success and helped Malaysia emerge from the turmoil with minor bruises unlike its neighbours who suffered dearly.

In recent years, Mahathir had been singled out by the opposition as the man who had, among others, silenced dissidents using controversial security laws, violated human rights, trampled democracy in Malaysia, and bailed out 'crony companies'.

In the Nov 1999 general election, the opposition expanded its parliamentary strength at the expense of the Mahathir-led Umno. Muslim opposition party PAS also captured Terengganu an east-coast state held by Barisan Nasional for the past four decades.

For all the supporters he gained for doing things his way Frank Sinatra's MyWay was the premier favourite song as well there was also an equal number of critics, both locally and in the international stage.

Enemy of the press

He has been in the top ten enemies of the press list for the past three years.

He has been criticised by almost all international human right watchdogs over his lackadaisical attitude towards human rights in this country. In fact, in late 1970s, while still a deputy prime minister, he said the government will shoot any Vietnamese refugee that ended up in Malaysian shores.

This is also person who justified his contempt for the reformasi supporters who had protested on the streets by saying that their activities were affecting the livelihoods of others.

However, Mahathir has gained a new wave of domestic support following the Sept 11 attacks on United States after scores of supporters and members of PAS were detained under the ISA for alleged Islamic militant activities.

The Malay mindset

Inspite of the materialistic development he has brought to the country, Mahathir is still disappointed over his failure to change the Malay mindset.

In a recent interview with a Malay daily, he had said that this inability to change the Malay way of thinking was his greatest failure in his 21 years as the premier.

In the past three years, he had cried, begged, scolded and pleaded the Malays to stand on their own, without expecting any help from the government.

He had even given a teary poem recital in one of the Umno annual general meetings to evoke the Malays to stand united and be progressive.

In the most recent Umno meeting, he apologised profusely to his race over his failure to change them.