DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH: New Cabinet to signal Malaysia’s resolve to reform

Newly re-elected Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak faces a challenge to name his Cabinet, the makeup of which will suggest whether he intends to push forward reforms or reward party old guards with plum ministerial berths that will help secure his job, analysts said.

The new cabinet is likely to be sworn in Thursday. The ministers are likely to be named Wednesday. There is no fixed number of Cabinet ministers. The last Cabinet had 30 ministers. Finance, defense, home, foreign and international trade are usually reserved for senior UMNO members.

Mr. Najib narrowly won the May 5 vote. His National Front coalition secured about 60% of the seats in Parliament, but won only 47% of the popular vote, with the opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim securing more than 50%.

That was the worst-ever showing of the ruling coalition in its uninterrupted reign since Malaysia gained independence from Britain in 1957. It could undermine Mr. Najib’s leadership within the United Malays National Organization, the core at the 13-party coalition, analysts said. Mr. Najib replaced Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 2009 after the ruling coalition, which was accustomed to winning by big margins, failed to get two-thirds parliamentary majority in the 2008 general election.

But UMNO Supreme Council Member Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz said Mr. Najib has no reason to worry.

“The prime minister is under no threat from UMNO because the party has done well in the general election,” Mr. Nazri said.

While UMNO won 88 seats in the 13th general election, up from the 79 seats it won in 2008, its coalition partners put up a dismal show with a haul of 44 seats this year, lower than the 61 seats it won in five years ago.

“Rewarding politicians in UMNO will be the top agenda [with Cabinet positions]because the party has gained more seats in the elections,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “But the prime minister would need to appoint his loyal supporters to consolidate his political position because of coalition’s poorer overall showing.”

The pro-reform Mr. Najib may risk distancing himself from hard-liners within UMNO if he deviates from the usual practice of filling key Cabinet berths with party old guards by appointing younger lawmakers and technocrats as he pushes for a graft-free administration, analysts say.

A clean image of the new Cabinet is crucial to win back the support of tens of thousands of mostly urban voters who, unhappy with widespread corruption, deserted the National Front in the last general election.

Mr. Najib has vowed to fight graft and has chipped away at decades-old programs that favor ethnic Malays in everything from education to government jobs in his bid to boost meritocracy in the multi-ethnic, fast-expanding economy.

“The prime minister has to display his quality of balancing new faces with experienced politicians,” said Yang Razali Kassim, a senior fellow at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

Mr. Najib will probably try to appoint qualified professionals and some business leaders with credibility to fill the seats of ministers who either lost or did not contest the elections, Mr. Yang added.

“This is not UMNO’s Cabinet. This is Malaysia’s cabinet and we need competent people regardless whether they are party stalwarts or not,” Mr. Nazri, the UMNO Supreme Council Member, said.

While four Cabinet ministers, including the former Commodity Minister Bernard Dompok lost in the May 5 election, another seven didn’t contest.

This gives Mr. Najib room to bring in professionals who could raise the government’s appeal as an efficient organization and also help in-part address the opposition’s charges of loose governance. The opposition routinely alleges that the government is party to UMNO’s culture of patronage as it hands out government contracts to build political loyalties.

However, analysts caution that business people running key ministries may not find favor with career politicians.

“If you are too clever, you get butchered quickly [in politics],” said Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, who teaches political science at National University Malaysia.

WSJ