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Putrajaya: Malaysia's premier made sweeping changes to his cabinet line-up yesterday, dumping his long-serving trade minister, after the ruling coalition suffered a heavy setback at elections this month.
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi retained his deputy, Najib Razak, as the defence minister, left his economic team almost intact, moved former foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar to the Home Ministry and scrapped some posts to reduce the size of his governing team.
The omission of Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz, a minister for almost 30 years and a senior member of the main ruling party, was the biggest surprise in the new line-up, which could shape Abdullah's political future after the election upset.
"Half (of the cabinet) will be new faces and will represent the people effectively," said Badawi, who faces a possible test of his leadership at party elections later this year.
Public accountability
Former farm minister Muhyiddin Yassin took the trade portfolio and Rais Yatim was named as the new foreign minister. Badawi also made it clear that the ministers would have to declare their assets, so that they were known to the public.
Asked why Rafidah, reputedly the world's longest-serving trade minister with 20 years on the job, had been dropped, he said: "I don't want to discuss this. I don't need to explain further. Rafidah needs to make way for someone new to take over."
Badawi's National Front coalition suffered the biggest electoral setback in its 50-year reign on March 8, when it lost its two-thirds majority in the federal parliament and five of the country's 13 states to opposition parties.
The opposition said the new team must get down to work immediately and draw up wide-ranging reforms in time for the first parliament sitting in May.
Strapped for time
"Time however is not on the side of the new Cabinet," said Lim Kit Siang, a leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party. "The political tsunami of March 8 does not give the new cabinet the luxury of the usual political honeymoon."
Economists warned that investors would not return until the current spell of political uncertainty ended.
"The cabinet will need to regain the confidence of the people and investors," said Chua Hak Bin, an economist at Citigroup in Singapore. "Malaysia needs to improve the standard of living of its citizens and try to balance the tensions between races."
"I have been given a mandate. A very strong mandate," Badawi, whose United Malays National Organisation leads the Barisan Nasional coalition, said in the administrative capital.
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