SERIOUS TROUBLE AHEAD FOR MALAYSIA – 22 YEARS HENCE, MAHATHIR IS STILL THE SAME, UNABLE TO SHARE POWER & WANTS TO CHOOSE HIS OWN SUCCESSOR: HE PREFERS TO LISTEN TO ADVICE OF CRONIES & UN-ELECTED ADVISERS LIKE DAIM INSTEAD OF HIS YOUNG CABINET – THE ECONOMIST

IS about 100 days since the leadership of Malaysia changed hands after 61 years of rule by one party. The electoral victory in May of Pakatan Harapan (PH), a coalition of parties, startled many people in Malaysia and beyond. The upset also surprised PH itself. Most members of the cabinet are still struggling to get the hang of what being in power entails. Malaysia’s nonagenarian new prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad (pictured), is an exception. He already has plenty of form as a national leader.

Dr Mahathir had previously run the country for more than two decades as a leader of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party which until the election had dominated Malaysian politics since independence from Britain in 1957. He had even mentored his ousted predecessor, Najib Razak, who now stands charged with graft, abuse of power and money-laundering. Back when its success at the polls seemed most unlikely, PH made bold pledges about what it would achieve in office. But the disparity of experience between the fledgling ministers and their grizzled leader is hindering its efforts.

The new administration has made at least some progress in most of the areas in which it had promised early results. These include action against Mr Najib and others over the scandal at 1MDB, a state investment fund from which $4.5bn disappeared during the previous administration; the abolition of an unpopular goods-and-services tax (GST); and the reintroduction of certain fuel subsidies. PH had promised an investigation into whether megaprojects involving foreign countries were worth the money. The result: infrastructure deals, including pipelines built with Chinese help and a high-speed rail project planned with Singapore, have either been cancelled or cut back.

But there are headwinds. Scrapping the GST will mean a fall in revenue: it brought in 45bn ringgit ($10.5bn) last year. This could be partly remedied by a new sales tax which the government plans to introduce in the coming weeks, and which is expected to be less onerous on consumers than the GST. High oil prices might also help meet the budget shortfall, since the government sucks up royalties from the state oil firm, Petronas. But there will still be fiscal pain, reckons Yeah Kim Leng of Sunway University in Kuala Lumpur.

The old man’s old style

Because of the inexperience of his cabinet, Dr Mahathir has, in effect, become chief of everything. This creates a bureaucratic bottleneck as he ponders investigations into 1MDB, diplomacy (he has already taken two trips to Japan and is due to visit China on August 17th) and ways of boosting economic growth (expected to be about 5% this year, down from nearly 6% in 2017).

PH vows to show greater respect for human rights than UMNO did. (Mr Najib’s henchmen often bullied journalists, activists and others.) However, the prime minister rules in the way he knows. He favours the advice of cronies, as well as of an unelected council of bigwigs selected by himself. His autocratic style can make people jump. Last month all the board members of Khazanah Nasional, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, resigned after he criticised their investment strategy (he said they were not doing enough to help firms owned by ethnic Malays).

Despite his self-deprecating jokes about his dictatorial style, Dr Mahathir is clearly reluctant to share power with others. But at least superficially, he has reduced the responsibilities that previously accompanied his job. Before he took over, the prime minister was also the minister of finance and supervisor of the election and anti-corruption commissions. Now Lim Guan Eng, a Chinese-Malaysian who once ran the state of Penang, is finance minister and the two commissions have been placed under the oversight of parliament.

Mr Lim’s appointment is an unusual move for Dr Mahathir, widely regarded as a champion of Malays and other indigenous groups (who make up 69% of the population) and the privileges accorded to them in Malaysia’s constitution. In a nod to the multiracial policies of PH’s dominant parties, the country now also has an ethnic-Indian attorney-general, the first non-Muslim to hold the post.

However, the new government is unlikely to attempt radical reforms to racial policies that favour indigenous people, for example in admission to public universities and recruitment for government jobs. The ruling coalition hangs together in part because all of its parties have agreed to uphold this system. Politicians of every stripe fear a backlash from ethnic-Malay voters should their privileges be curtailed.

But civil-society activists are disappointed that the government has failed to remedy what they regard as relatively simple problems relating to human rights. For example, it has yet to fulfil a pledge to repeal oppressive laws, such as one passed by the previous government to combat “fake news”. The Sedition Act, used to prosecute government critics, also remains in place. The government has made little progress towards meeting another promise, outlawing child marriage.

Neither has it made much headway with other commitments, such as to raise the minimum wage and introduce a health-care scheme for the poor. Bureaucratic resistance may be partly to blame. Last month the head of the civil service ordered senior officials to identify saboteurs loyal to the old regime in their departments. Dr Mahathir is trying to replace 17,000 political appointees who served under Mr Najib. But Isham Ishak, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, worries that a “trust deficit” will remain between new leaders and their minions.

Overall approval ratings for the new administration remain high. But Malaysia is already wondering about its next leader. Dr Mahathir has promised to give the job within two years to Anwar Ibrahim, a former UMNO colleague who was locked up both by Dr Mahathir and by Mr Najib on spurious sodomy charges. Mr Anwar was freed from prison shortly after the election and leads the most prominent party in the coalition, Parti Keadilan Rakyat. More recently, Dr Mahathir has said that letting Mr Anwar take over after two years was only “a suggestion”. But if he does step down in the proposed time frame, Dr Mahathir does not have long to enact the policies he cares about.

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