After months of intense pressure, Abdullah Badawi announced on Wednesday that he was quitting as Malaysia's prime minister in March 2009. He will hand over power to his deputy, Najib Razak. Najib accession to the premiership on March 31, 2009, will make political history in Malaysia. His father, Tun Abdul Razak, was Malaysia's second prime minister who served from 1970 to 1976, and Najib will be the first son (or daughter) in Malaysian politics to follow the father's footsteps.
Far more interesting is that political dynasties in South-East Asia, unlike elsewhere, are flourishing. In Indonesia, Megawati Soekarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia's first president, became president herself from 2001 to 2004. It does not matter that her presidency was almost as disastrous politically as her father, her name alone guarantees her a real chance to win the presidency again in next year's Indonesian elections.
It's a similar pattern in the Philippines. Current President Gloria Arroyo is the daughter of Diosdado Macapagal, who was president from 1961 to 1965. Like Megawati, Arroyo's rule has not brought any real progress to the country.
Probably the most successful of this lot is Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, and the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew. For the most part, the younger Lee has delivered on the key issues such as economic prosperity and making Singapore into a global city. Of course, a major part of the reason for Lee's success is good governance and the absence of large-scale corruption in Singapore, unlike Indonesia and the Philippines where corruption has increased in the past few years.
One question often asked is how is it that in the age of the internet and globalisation, children of political dynasties still easily move into positions of power. The answer appears to be structural. In all the countries mentioned above, the children are given privileged access to the political elite at any early age and groomed by their family for a political carer. This could not be clearer than Najib's case. When his father Tun Razak died of leukaemia on January 14, 1976, Najib took over his father's constituency at the age of 22. He became a member of cabinet a few years later.
Similarly, Singapore's Lee was also groomed from an early age. He followed his father, Lee Kuan Yew, on his political campaigns in the early 1960s. After a meteoric rise in the Singapore Armed Forces, he entered Parliament at the age of 32 and became a minister a year later.
Despite better education and rising standards of living, politics is still very parochial and traditional in many South-East Asian states. The stranglehold by traditional politicians is especially strong in rural areas in which the land-owning class keeps its tenants poor and under strict control. In some areas, such as the sugar-growing fields in the Philippines, it's akin to slavery as the tenants are bonded to the land owners for generations. The standard joke in Manila is that 12 Mestizo families own 99 per cent of the land in the Philippines and 100 per cent of seats in Congress.
There is also an Asian belief that political power can be passed on to the next generation through the bloodline. The concept of political competition to find the best candidate is not widely understood where open conflict and public debate are not encouraged. It means that for those who expect South-East Asia to democratise more quickly and adopt a more open, transparent society will be disappointed.
James Chin teaches at Monash University's Malaysian Campus.