Abdul Razak Hussein

Abdul Razak Hussein (1922–1976) was a Malaysian statesman who served as the country's second prime minister from 1970 until his death in 1976, after thirteen years as its first deputy prime minister. Remembered posthumously as the "Father of Development", he authored the New Economic Policy and turned Malaysia's foreign policy towards neutrality and non-alignment. "Tun", by which he is often styled, is an honorific title, not part of his name. ^{1 2}

Abdul Razak bin Hussein was born on 11 March 1922 at Kampung Pulau Keladi, near Pekan, Pahang, first child of Hussein Awang bin Mohd Taib, an aristocrat holding the title Orang Kaya Indera Shahbandar. He studied at the Malay College Kuala Kangsar, joined the Malay Administrative Service in 1938, and won a scholarship to Raffles College, Singapore, in 1940, before the war cut his studies short. ^{1 3}

In Pahang he helped organise the Wataniah resistance and served inside the Japanese administration as an informant for Force 136, at real cost to his reputation among those who did not know his role. After the war he read law in London, qualified at Lincoln's Inn in 1950, led Malay students in Britain, and on returning joined UMNO, becoming Pahang's chief minister in 1955 and education minister in the first elected federal government, where his Razak Report shaped the national education system. ¹

Deputy prime minister and defence minister from independence in 1957, he also drove national and rural development. After the riots of 13 May 1969 he directed the National Operations Council that governed under the emergency, and on Tunku Abdul Rahman's resignation in 1970 he succeeded him. As prime minister he launched the New Economic Policy to reduce economic disparity between communities, built the Barisan Nasional coalition in 1974, joined the Non-Aligned Movement, declared the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality, and opened relations with China in 1974. ^{1 4}

Diagnosed with leukaemia in 1969 and given two years to live, he concealed the illness and worked on; he died in office at London on 14 January 1976, seeking treatment, and was laid to rest in the Heroes' Mausoleum at Kuala Lumpur. His eldest son, Najib Razak, became Malaysia's sixth prime minister in 2009 — a filiation recorded here in prose, since Najib's own record is not yet part of this graph. No source read for this record names a religious school for Abdul Razak, and this record records none. ^{1 5 2}

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