Mahathir turns to old hands to oversee reforms, investigations

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad named Lim Guan Eng as finance minister and set up an advisory board that includes a billionaire and a former central bank governor to carry out his economic plan.

Mahathir, 92, is forming a council of five elders that bring in palm oil tycoon Robert Kuok, former Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin and Zeti Akhtar Aziz, who led Bank Negara Malaysia for 16 years. The people will be tasked with advising the cabinet and probing government personnel.

“We need to do investigations on a lot of things,” Mahathir said on Saturday in Kuala Lumpur. “Some of these things may involve the ministries and the personnel themselves, so we need people who are not involved to be getting and studying reports made either by ministries or by certain bodies which we will consult.”

Mahathir plans to have a small cabinet of up to 25 members, with at least 10 of the posts filled by next week. He has asked leaders of the four parties in his coalition to submit three names each, with him reserving the right to decide on ministerial appointments.

The setting up of the advisory council underlines Mahathir’s preference for old hands and his focus on 1MDB, on which he said there was enough evidence to reopen a probe.

Meanwhile, the cabinet line-up shows his need to satisfy leaders in his coalition. Lim hails from the mostly ethnic Chinese Democratic Action Party, while his pick for defence minister Mohamad Sabu is from a group that broke away from the Islamic party known as PAS.

Already, rifts are beginning to show. Deputy Prime Minister Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who is also president of the People’s Justice Party known as PKR, was notably absent from the briefing. PKR sees the ministerial appointments as not final as they should be agreed upon by all four parties, Rafizi Ramli, the party’s vice-president, said in a statement. Mahathir was making his way to meet de facto coalition leader Anwar Ibrahim regarding the picks, Rafizi said.

Mahathir is expected to serve as interim prime minister and hand over power to Anwar once he is eligible to take the post.

Shock victory

Mahathir’s coalition won a shock victory in Wednesday’s election, partly by winning over voters unhappy with rising living costs, which they blamed on a 6 per cent goods and services tax. The prime minister has pledged to scrap the tax within 100 days, reintroduce fuel subsidies and raise minimum wages, as well as review large-scale projects including the high-speed rail to connect the capital Kuala Lumpur with Singapore.

“We want to review all contracts that are not in favour or do not benefit Malaysia,” Lim said in a briefing in Kuala Lumpur, referring to big-ticket projects conceived by the previous government. “We are all Malaysians here. Our focus is to help Malaysians.” Those spending plans will undermine efforts to curb the budget deficit. The former administration under Najeeb Razak had narrowed the deficit over time to 3 per cent of gross domestic product, while pledging to keep debt under 55 per cent of GDP.