ABSTRACT
Malaysia’s eleventh general election that was held in March 2004 provided the much-needed opportunity for the newly appointed Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to seek a fresh mandate from the Malaysian electorate. Abdullah, who was then acting president of his ethnic Malay-based United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), also needed to consolidate his position in his party where he was seeking to be president in his own right. For all intents and purposes, he needed to boost his credentials before he could confidently preside over the forthcoming UMNO general assembly and the all-important party elections. In this regard, his political performance would also be measured in terms of his ability as the party leader to wean some Malay voters from UMNO’s nemesis, the Malay-Islamist party, Parti Islam SeMalaysia, or better known as PAS, and to a limited extent, the Malay-majority party, Parti Keadilan Rakyat (or popularly known as Keadilan), the leader of which is Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, wife of the sacked deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.
