Najib Razak

Dato' Sri Haji Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak (born 23 July 1953) is the sixth and current Prime Minister of Malaysia. He previously held the post of Deputy Prime Minister from January 7, 2004 until he succeeded Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as Prime Minister on April 3, 2009. Najib is President of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). He is the son of Malaysia's second prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak.

Najib succeeded Abdullah at a time after his ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional, lost its long held two-thirds majority in parliament to the opposition led by former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in the 2008 parliamentary election. Since then Najib has tried to build a moderate image for himself and the UMNO through the 1Malaysia campaign.

Early Life

Born July 23, 1953, in Kuala Lipis, Pahang, Najib is the eldest of Prime Minister Abdul Razak's six sons, and the nephew of Hussein Onn, Malaysia’s third Prime Minister. Najib’s five brothers are named Nizam, Nazim, Nazir, Nazri Aziz and Johari. His younger brother, Dato' Seri Mohd Nazir Abdul Razak, runs the country's second-largest lender, Bumiputra-Commerce Holdings Bhd. Najib is also one of the Four Noblemen of the Pahang Darul Makmur (Royal Court) by virtue of his inherited title as the Orang Kaya Indera Shahbandar. He received his primary and secondary education at St. John's Institution, Kuala Lumpur. He later attended Malvern College  in Worcestershire, England, and subsequently went to the University of Nottingham, where he received abachelor's degree in industrial economics in 1974. Najib Razak returned to Malaysia in 1974 and entered the business world, serving briefly in Bank Negara (Central Bank)and later with Petronas (Malaysia's national oil company)) as a public affairs manager.

In 1976 Najib married Tengku Puteri Zainah Tengku Eskandar ('Ku Yie') with whom he has three children: Mohd Nizar Najib (born 1978), Mohd Nazifuddin Najib and Puteri Norlisa Najib. In 1987 he divorced Ku Yie and married Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor with whom he has two children: Mohd Norashman Najib and Nooryana Najwa Najib. This is Rosmah's second marriage as well. She has two children from her previous marriage to Farid Ismeth Emir who was a former TV news presenter and currently a general manager in a trading company.

Appointment as Prime Minister

Najib, became the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia on 3 April 2009. Najib entered office with a focus on domestic economic issues and political reform. On his first day as Prime Minister, Najib announced as his first actions the removal of bans on two opposition newspapers, Suara Keadilan and Harakahdaily, run by the opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim-led People's Justice Party and the Pan Islamic Party, respectively, and the release of 13 people held under the Internal Security Act. 
Among the released detainees were two ethnic Indian activists who were arrested in December 2007 for leading an anti-government campaign, three foreigners and eight suspected Islamic militants. Najib also pledged to conduct a comprehensive review of the much-criticized law which allows for indefinite detention without trial. In the speech, he emphasized his commitment to tackling poverty, restructuring Malaysian society, expanding access to quality education for all, and promoting renewed “passion for public service.” He also deferred and abandoned the digital television transition plan of all free-to-air broadcasters such as Radio Televisyen Malaysia.

Click here for more info...

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Anders Fogh Rasmussen (born 26 January 1953) is a Danish politician, and the 12th and current Secretary General of NATO. Rasmussen served as Prime Minister of Denmark from November 27, 2001 to April 5, 2009.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen was the leader of the Liberal Party (Venstre), and headed a right-wing coalition with the Conservative People's Party which took office in 2001, and won its second and third terms in February 2005 and in November 2007. Rasmussen's government relied on the Danish People's Partyfor support, in keeping with the Danish tradition for minority government. His government introduced tougher limits on non-ECA immigration and froze tax rates before he took office (the "tax freeze", or skattestoppet in Danish). He has authored several books about taxation and government structure.
In his early career, Rasmussen was a strident critic of the welfare state, writing the classical liberal book From Social State to Minimal State in 1993. However, through the 1990s, his views moved towards the political centre. Under Rasmussen, certain taxes were lowered, but the Conservative coalition partners repeatedly argued for more tax cuts and a flat tax rate at no higher than 50%. Fogh implemented an administrative reform reducing the number of municipalities (kommuner) and replacing the thirteen counties (amter) with five regions. Rasmussen referred to this as "the biggest reform in thirty years". He is of no relation to either his predecessor, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, or to his successor, Lars Løkke Rasmussen; their shared last name is a very common name in Denmark.
Personal Life
Anders Fogh Rasmussen was born in 1953 in Ginnerup, Jutland, to farmer Knud Rasmussen and Martha Rasmussen (née Fogh). His last name is Rasmussen, while Fogh, his mother's maiden name, is his middle name and not considered part of his last name. He is correctly referred to as Rasmussen (not Fogh Rasmussen), unless his full name (including his given name) is used. In Danish media and society, he has often been popularly referred to as Fogh Rasmussen, or merely Anders Fogh, when not referred to by his full name, mainly to distinguish him from other prominent politicians in the country with the same family name.

He matriculated in languages and social studies from Viborg Cathedral School, in 1969–1972.^{[citation needed]} A graduate in Economics (1978) of the University of Aarhus, he has been active in politics most of his life. He has authored several books about taxation and government structure. He and his wife Anne-Mette (born 1958) married in 1978 and have three children: Henrik (born 1979), Maria (born 1981) and Christina (born 1984).
As an amateur cyclist, Rasmussen completed part of the notorious Alpe d'Huez stage of the 2008 Tour de France the day after the professional race took place. His attendance at Le Tour was at the invitation of Danish former cyclist Bjarne Riis. Rasmussen is also an avid runner.
Early Political Career
He has held numerous positions in government and opposition throughout his career, first winning a seat in the Folketing (Danish parliament) in 1978.

Politics
In general, Rasmussen is in favour of centralisation, privatization, and limiting the size of government. Rasmussen wrote the book From Social State to Minimal State (Danish: Fra socialstat til minimalstat) in 1993, in which he advocated an extensive reform of the Danish welfare system along classic liberal lines. In particular, he favors lower taxes and less government interference in corporate and individual matters etc. In 1993 he was awarded the Adam Smith award by the libertarian society Libertas, partly due to him having written From Social State to Minimal State.
Resignation as Minister of Taxation
From 1987 to 1990 he was Minister for Taxation and from 1990 Minister for Economy and Taxation in the Conservative-led Poul Schlüter government. In 1992 Rasmussen resigned from his ministerial posts after a report from a commission of inquiry had decided that he had provided the Folketing with inaccurate and incomplete information regarding his decision to postpone payment of several bills from Regnecentralen and Kommunedata from one accounting year to the next. Rasmussen disagreed with the findings of the commission, but faced with the threat of a motion of no confidence, he decided to leave his posts voluntarily.
2001 election
His Liberal (Venstre) Party won power in the November 2001 election, defeating the Social Democratic government of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and enabling him to form his first Cabinet. That election marked a dramatic change in Danish politics. It was the first time since 1920 that the Social Democratic Party lost its position as the largest party in the Folketing (parliament), mainly due to a loss of working class votes to Dansk Folkeparti (The Danish People's Party).

Click here for more info...

Hassanal Bolkiah

General Haji Sir Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah GCB GCMG (born 15 July 1946) is the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, the 29th Sultan of Brunei and the first Prime Minister of Brunei Darussalam. He was the eldest son of Omar Ali Saifuddien III, the 28th Sultan of Brunei, and Pengiran Anak Damit.

Political Role as Sultan

Under Brunei's 1959 constitution, the Sultan is the head of state with full executive authority, including emergency powers since 1962. On 9 March 2006, the Sultan was reported to have changed Brunei's constitution to make himself infallible under Bruneian law. Bolkiah is also the Prime Minister as well as holding the portfolios of Minister of Defence and Finance.

As Minister of Defence he is also the Supreme Commander of the Royal Brunei Armed Forces; an Honorary General in the British and Indonesian armed forces and an Honorary Admiral of the Fleet in the British Navy. He appointed himself as Inspector General of Police (IGP) of the Royal Brunei Police Force.

He addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Brunei Darussalam's admission to the United Nations in September, 1984. In 1991, he introduced a conservative ideology to Brunei called Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB) (orMalay Islamic Monarchy), which presents the monarchy as the defender of the faith. He has recently favoured Brunei government democratisation and declared himself Prime Minister and President. In 2004, the Legislative Council, which had been dissolved since 1962, was reopened. His designated successor is his eldest son, Al-Muhtadee Billah.

Early Years and education

He was born on 15 July 1946 in Brunei Town (now called Bandar Seri Begawan). He became crown prince in 1961 and sultan on 5 October 1967, after his father abdicated voluntarily. His coronation was held on 1 August 1968. Like his father, he has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, of which Brunei was a protectorate until 1984.

The Sultan received high school education in Malaysia's premier school Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur, where he joined the Cadet Corps (band). After receiving a private education in Brunei, the Sultan attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in October 1967 but returned home to be the Crown Prince few months before graduation.

Other assets

Despite his personal extravagance, he has attempted to share the country's oil wealth. In Brunei, mockingly dubbed the "Shellfare State", a reference to the significant influence of the Shell Oil Company, Bruneians have free education and medical services. There are neither personal nor corporate taxesin Brunei.

His official residence is the Istana Nurul Iman, with 1,888 rooms, 290 bathrooms, and a floor area of 2,152,782 sq ft (200,000 m²), undisputedly the world's second largest palace after Beijing's Forbidden City (720,000 m²). The Istana is an official residence with offices housing the Offices of the Sultan and Yang DiPertuam, Grand Chamberlain's office, many istana departments like protocol, istana household and finance departments and offices of the Prime Minister's Department. Some offices of the Ministry of Defence and Ministries of Finance are also functional there as the Sultan is the Prime Minister, Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. 

The Crown Prince, who is the Senior Minister, also works from offices at the istana. Hyatt Borneo Management Services and HM The Sultan's flight also maintain offices there. He has 531 Mercedes-Benzes 367 Ferraris 362 Bentleys 185 BMWs 177 Jaguars 160 Porsches 130 Rolls-Royces 1 Reliant Robin And 20 Lamborghinis Bringing the total number of his cars to 1,933. The Sultan has also a Boeing 747 worth a hundred million dollars, and then re-designed as a home at a cost of more than one hundred and twenty million dollars. Featured add-ons such as a whirlpool bath of pure gold He also has six small aircraft and two helicopters.

Click here for more info...

Ban Ki-moon

Ban Ki-moon (Hangul: 반기문; born 13 June 1944) is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, after succeeding Kofi Annan in 2007. Before becoming Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he graduated from university, accepting his first post in New Delhi, India. In the foreign ministry he established a reputation for modesty and competence.

Ban was the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea from January 2004 to November 2006. In February 2006, he began to campaign for the office of Secretary-General. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office. As foreign minister of Korea, however, he was able to travel to all of the countries that were members of the United Nations Security Council, a maneuver that turned him into the front runner.

On 13 October 2006, he was elected to be the eighth Secretary-General by the United Nations General Assembly. On 1 January 2007, he successfully succeeded Annan, and led several major reforms regarding peacekeeping and UN employment practices. Diplomatically, Ban has taken particularly strong views on Darfur, where he helped persuade Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to allow peacekeeping troops to enter Sudan; and on global warming, pressing the issue repeatedly with former U.S. President George W. Bush. Ban has received strong criticism from OIOS, the UN internal audit unit, stating that the secretariat, under Ban's leadership, is "drifting into irrelevance".

Biography

Ban was born in Eumseong in a small farming village in North Chungcheong, in 1944 at the end of the Japanese rule of Korea. His family moved to the nearby town of Chungju, where he was raised. During Ban's childhood, his father had a warehouse business, but the warehouse went bankrupt and the family lost its middle-class standard of living. When Ban was six, his family fled to a remote mountainside for the duration of the Korean War. After the war ended, his family returned to Chungju. Ban has mentioned meeting U.S. military troops at this time.

In secondary school (Chungju High School), Ban became a star pupil, particularly in his studies of English. In 1952, he was selected by his class to address a message to then UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, but it is unknown if the message was ever sent. In 1962, Ban won an essay contest sponsored by the Red Cross and earned a trip to the United States where he lived in San Francisco with a host family for several months. As part of the trip, Ban met U.S. President John F. Kennedy. When a journalist at the meeting asked Ban what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, "I want to become a diplomat."

Ban received a B.A. in International Relations from Seoul National University in 1970, and earned a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1985. At Harvard, he studied under Joseph Nye who remarked that Ban had "a rare combination of analytic clarity, humility and perseverance." Ban was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws (Honoris Causa) by the University of Maltaon 22 April 2009. He further received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Washington in October 2009. In addition to his native Korean, Ban speaks English, French, and Japanese. There have been questions, however, regarding the extent of his knowledge of French, one of the two working languages of the United Nations Secretariat.

Families

Ban Ki-moon met Yoo Soon-taek in 1962 when they were both high school students. Ban was 18 years old, and Yoo Soon-taek was his secondary school's student council president. Ban Ki-moon married Yoo Soon-taek in 1971. They have three adult children: two daughters and a son. His eldest daughter, Seon-yong (born 1972), works for the Korea Foundation in Seoul. His son, Woo-hyun (born 1974) received an MBA from Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles and works for an investment firm in New York. His youngest daughter, Hyun-hee (born 1976), is a field officer for UNICEF in Nairobi, Kenya. After his election as Secretary-General, Ban became an icon in his hometown, where his extended family still resides. 

Over 50,000 gathered in a soccer stadium in Chungju for celebration of the result. In the months following his election, thousands of practitioners of feng shui went to his village to determine how it produced such an important person. Ban himself is not a member of any church or religious group and has declined to expound his beliefs: "Now, as Secretary-General, it will not be appropriate at this time to talk about my own belief in any particular religion or God. So maybe we will have some other time to talk about personal matters." His mother is reportedly Buddhist.

Personality

In the Korean Foreign Ministry his nickname was Ban-jusa, meaning "the Bureaucrat" or "the administrative clerk." The name was used as both positive and negative: complimenting Ban's attention to detail and administrative skill while deriding what was seen as a lack of charisma and subservience to his superiors. The Korean press corps calls him "the slippery eel" for his ability to dodge questions. His demeanor has also been described as a "Confucian approach." He is regarded by many as a "stand-up guy" and is known for his "easy smile".

Click here for more info...

Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai, GCMG (Pashto: حامد کرزی, Ḥāmid Karzay; born 24 December 1957) is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001. During the December 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Germany, Karzai was selected by prominent Afghan political figures to serve a six month term as Chairman of the Interim Administration.

He was then chosen for a two years term as Interim President during the 2002 loya jirga (grand assembly) that was held in Kabul, Afghanistan. After the2004 presidential election, Karzai was declared winner and became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He won a second five-year-term in the 2009 presidential election.

Early Years and Education

Karzai was born on 24 December 1957 in the village of Karz, located on the edge of Kandahar City in southern Afghanistan. He is an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament during the 1960s. His grandfather, Khair Mohammad Khan, had served in the 1919 Afghanistan's war of independence and as the Deputy Speaker of the Senate. Karzai's family were strong supporters of Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan. His uncle, Habibullah Karzai, served as representative of Afghanistan at the United Nations and is said to have accompanied King Zahir Shah in the early 1960s to the United States for a special meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Hamid Karzai attended Mahmood Hotaki Elementary School in Kandahar and Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani School in Kabul. He graduated from Habibia High School in 1976. From 1979 to 1983, Karzai took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. He is well versed in several languages, including his native tongue which is Pashto as well as Dari (Persian), Urdu, Hindi, English and French.
Early Careers
After obtaining his Master's degree in India he moved to neighboring Pakistan to work as a fundraiser for the anti-communist mujahideen during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Mujahideens were backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Karzai was a secret contact for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. While Karzai remained in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation his family emigrated to the United States. When Najibullah's Soviet-backed government collapsed in 1992, the Peshawar Accords agreed upon by the Afghan political parties established the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government to be followed by general elections. Karzai accompanied the first mujahideen leaders into Kabul in 1992 following the Soviet withdrawal. He served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

When the Taliban emerged in the mid 1990s, Karzai initially recognized them as a legitimate government because he thought they would stop the violence and corruption in his country. Karzai stated in 2008 that "there were many wonderful people in the Taliban." Karzai was asked by the Taliban to serve as their ambassador but he refused, telling friends he felt that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was wrongly using them. In the late 1990s, Karzai lived in Pakistan as an Afghan refugee, where he worked to reinstate former Afghan King Zahir Shah. On the morning of 14 July 1999, Karzai's father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was gunned down as he was coming home from a mosque in the city of Quetta. Reports suggest that the Taliban carried out the assassination. Karzai then started to work closely with the United Front(Northern Alliance), which was led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. In 2000 and 2001, he traveled to Europe and the United States to help gather support for the anti-Taliban movement. In a 2002 interview Karzai stated:

"I considered him (Ahmad Shah Massoud) to be a very patriotic Afghan. The Taliban came and I recognized the nature of the Taliban, and their designs, or their backer's designs, whatever, the combination of it. And I began to get a lot more in touch with Ahmad Shah Massoud. And I exchanged views with him and entirely supported his resistance to this creeping invasion of Afghanistan. One thing that was very similar between us was the exactness of opinions on what was going on in Afghanistan. I shared absoulutely his views on the nature of things in Afghanistan and as to who was behind the troubles in Afghanistan. ... His advice to me turned out to be very very right. He said, 'Well, don't you ever go to an urban area. As strong as you may be, you will find it difficult because there is lots of foreign hand with the Taliban, intelligence and all that. They will find you and they will make it difficult. They will make people suffer. Go to the mountains.' That's exactly what I did. But, sadly, when I did that he wasn't there. The last time I spoke with him was a week before his assassination... He was definitely assassinated by a suicide bomber that came from outside Afghanistan, that was foreign... And September 11 happened two days afterwards. So one can only draw that conclusion from the sequence of events that it was an intention... The enemies of Afghanistan organized the assassination. In my position, I will not be able to go beyond it – the enemies of Afghanistan."

       —Hamid Karzai, 2002

According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. U.N. officials stated that there had been 15 massacres between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "these have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the Taliban Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." During the 1997–1998 battles of Mazar-i-Sharif, about 4,000 civilians were killed by the Taliban. The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in Taliban killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.

As the United States armed forces were preparing for a confrontation with the Taliban in September 2001, Karzai began urging NATO nations to purge his country of Al-Qaeda. "These Arabs, together with their foreign supporters and the Taliban, destroyed miles and miles of homes and orchards and vineyards," he told BBC, "They have killed Afghans. They have trained their guns on Afghan lives... We want them out."

Click here for more info...