Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Muʿizzaddin Waddaulah, born on 15 July 1946, in Brunei Town [now
Bandar Seri Begawan], Brunei, is the 29th sultan of Brunei.
Hassanal Bolkiah was the eldest son of Sultan Sir
Haji Omar Ali Saifuddin. He was educated
privately and later attended the Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England. In 1961
Sir Omar named him crown prince, and when Sir Omar abdicated six years
later, Hassanal Bolkiah became sultan on 5 October 1967, his coronation taking
place on 1 August 1968. For the next decade, however, his father remained the
power behind the throne. After the death of his mother in 1979, his father
withdrew from public affairs, and the sultan quickly took the dominant role in
the administration of Brunei. He made frequent trips throughout the country to
listen to his subjects as well as to promote himself as ruler. In anticipation
of independence
from Britain, he began to create a native bureaucracy, replacing British
expatriates in the civil service with Bruneians, and he cracked down on
corruption.
After having held Brunei as a protectorate for 95 years,
the British formally withdrew on 1 January 1984. Although there were minor
disagreements over matters such as the management of Brunei’s huge investment
portfolio, relations between the two countries continued to be friendly. Sir
Omar died in 1986, and on 5 October 1992, the sultan, who also acted as prime
minister and as the minister of defence and of finance, celebrated the 25th
year of his reign. He continued to rule under a state of emergency declared by
his father in 1962. In the 1980s and 1990s the sultan regularly appeared at or
near the top of lists of the world’s richest individuals, his fortune deriving
from Brunei’s oil and gas.
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