NAJIB MUST NOW WIN IT FOR HIMSELF

BANGKOK, Oct 9 - Malaysia's Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday that he would step down in March, paving the way for his anointed successor to take control of a governing party that is losing its grip after five decades in power.

Abdullah, who was widely criticised inside and outside his party for a languid leadership style, has been prime minister for five years and faced mounting calls to quit after leading his party to near defeat in March elections, the poorest results for the governing coalition in its history.

Amid ethnic tensions and simmering discontent over rising prices, the accession to the top job by Abdullah's chosen successor, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, is not a sure thing. Najib must win party electionsset for March.

In making his announcement yesterday, Abdullah was surprisingly non-committal about Najib's prospects.

''At some point I will have to hand over to my successor,'' Abdullah said. Once Najib wins the party elections, ''then we can discuss,'' he said.

Najib faces a challenge within the governing party by a former finance minister, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

The governing party, Umno, also faces a resurgent opposition led by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who has not delivered on recent promises to unseat the government but remains a powerful threat.

Anwar said in an interview that he still had support from enough defectors from the governing party to form a government but refused to say when he would mount the challenge. He missed two September self-imposeddeadlines.

Although Abdullah's announcement removes a layer of uncertainty for the governing party, analysts say Najib will find it difficult to reunite the party and assert his leadership.
''Najib faces a very difficult terrain,'' said Bridget Welsh, a specialist in Malaysian politics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

In a survey carried out in September by the Merdeka Centre, a non-partisan polling institute, 44 per cent of respondents said they believed Najib would not make a good prime minister, while 39 per cent had a favourable opinion.

Welsh said that Najib, whose father was Malaysia's second prime minister, has a record of favouring authoritarian measures during his more than three decades as a member of Parliament.
Najib is also unpopular among Malaysia's minority Indian and Chinese communities and favours the continuation of a policy of preferences for the ruling Malays that his father put into place in the 1970s.

One major hurdle for Najib will be convincing voters that he had no role in the 2006 murder of a Mongolian woman whose body was disposed of with military-grade explosives in a patch of jungle outside Kuala Lumpur.

Najib's long-time assistant and two commandos are currently on trial for the woman's death. — International Herald Tribune