Abstract :
The 12th Malaysian General Election on 8 March 2008 ended with the ruling National Front suffering a rather humiliating defeat that the coalition never experienced before. Many factors have been discussed and reasons given for the unprecedented outcome of the election. In the 12th Malaysian General Election in 2004 one of the important elements incorporated in the National Front s election manifesto was the implementation of the approach of Islam Hadhari. In that election the coalition, particularly UMNO managed to win the election with a resounding victory, even taking over Terengganufrom PAS. When National Front suffered the setbacks in 2008 some believed that it was contributed by the Approach of Islam Hadhari which was rejected by the voters. Based on the feedbacks taken from 3, 443 respondents in a fieldwork survey conducted in May - July 2008 it was found that the Malays were equally divided between those who believed this was the contributing factor and otherwise. Similarly, the survey also shows that a biggerpercentage of the respondents believe that the approach will only be implemented during Abdullah Ahmad Badawi s administration and the approach would not be that relevant after the Malaysian 12th General Election.
