Australian Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of turning his back on Asia, kowtowing to the United States and being Australia’s most bland leader.
On Saturday, he assured himself a place in history with his fourth straight election victory, which will make him Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister in December.
A leader who once held a beer-drinking record at Oxford University, Howard has made his blandness and conservatism his main selling points.
It has won him friends in high places.
US President George Bush last year called Howard a ”man of steel” for defying widespread public anger to send 2 000 troops to join the invasion of Iraq.
On the campaign trail in St Louis early on Saturday, Bush said: ”I want to congratulate my good friend, Prime Minister John Howard, who won a great victory.”
In his past three-year term, Howard sealed a free-trade deal with Washington, a multibillion-dollar natural-gas contract with China and bolstered counter-terrorism cooperation between Jakarta and Canberra in the aftermath of the October 12 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, on the Indonesian island.
But Howard’s methods in fighting terrorists also have angered some of Australia’s Asian neighbours.
In 2002, he sparked a diplomatic spat with some Asian leaders by saying he would launch pre-emptive strikes in their countries to fight terrorists plotting to attack Australia.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who long viewed Australia as an agent of the West, said at the time Canberra was behaving ”as if these are the good old days when people can shoot Aborigines without caring for human rights”.
Howard’s middle name is Winston, but he displays none of the charisma of Britain’s World War II leader. Instead, analysts say, his strength is his gritty tenacity.
He lost his first tilt at the nation’s top job to Labour Party prime minister Bob Hawke in 1987 and the following year was written off by the conservative journal Quadrant.
”John Howard appears to be a leader without any kind of voter mandate,” the journal said. ”He is neither liked nor respected. Reflections on Howard are almost entirely negative.”
It added: ”We can only question the potential inherent in a leader whose strongest perception is that he’s boring.”
A year later, the party dumped Howard as leader. He dismissed the possibility of a comeback at the time, telling a journalist that would be ”like Lazarus with a triple bypass”.
But the owlish son of a gas-station owner who grew up in suburban Sydney regained the party leadership in 1995 after bitter internal party squabbling.
The next year, he led the conservative coalition to trounce Hawke’s successor, Paul Keating, when voters turned in droves away from the Labour leader’s perceived arrogance and superior air and supported the staid Howard.
A wily political operator, Howard won re-election in 1998 and 2001 after campaigns that capitalised on disunity within Labour and tapped deep fears in Australian society about an influx of unauthorised immigrants.
If he remains in power until December, the 65-year-old will overtake the charismatic Hawke’s record as second-longest-serving prime minister of eight years, nine months and 10 days.
After reaching that milestone, Howard is widely expected to retire before the next election, due in 2007.
The longest-serving national leader was Liberal founder Robert Menzies, who lasted more than 18 years and who inspired Howard as a 15-year-old.
A staunch supporter of the US-led war on terror, Howard is the first of the three leaders who invaded Iraq to seek re-election.
Bush faces the polls in November and British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to call an election next year.
Howard maintains he has no regrets about his decision to join US and British forces in the invasion and has denied widespread accusations that he lied about his reasons for waging war.
On foreign policy, Howard lists among his successes Iraq and Australia’s leadership of a multilateral force of troops that restored order in East Timor after the half-island nation’s bloody vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999.
Domestically, highlights have included tightening gun control following a 1996 massacre by a lone gunman in Tasmania state, the introduction of a consumption tax that almost cost him the 1998 election and nonstop economic growth during his tenure. — Sapa-AP