June 24, 2002	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 12, 1423

KUALA LUMPUR, June 23: Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s retraction of his shock resignation on Saturday was only to give other party leaders time to work out the transition of power, a senior ruling party source said.

Asia’s longest serving leader believed the time was right to step down after 21 years in power and he go through with his resignation, the source in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) told Reuters.

In an extraordinary weekend, the leader of the main Islamic opposition died and his successor is to be a religious firebrand who denounces Mahathir for keeping mostly-Muslim Malaysia secular.

Mahathir is seen as a progressive Muslim leader in a country where Muslims are only narrowly in the majority.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will now have to fulfil that role, as he will certainly take over the premiership at some point soon, said the UMNO source, who asked not to be named. The only question is when.

“That seems to be the position as we’re hearing it too,” one western diplomat told Reuters.

The 76-year-old Mahathir flew to Italy on Sunday for a 10-day holiday after a meeting with other UMNO leaders.

The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, meanwhile, was to hold a supreme council meeting to clarify the political situation, the official Bernama news agency said.

Bernama said Abdullah had told reporters that the meeting would take place “as soon as possible” so as to allay any confusion about Saturday’s events.

A sobbing Mahathir rocked the UMNO general assembly on Saturday by announcing he was quitting all party and coalition posts. The speech was carried live on national television.

Within an hour Abdullah and other party leaders had talked him into staying on, but sources say Mahathir told them privately he was adamant he would hand over power.

EMOTIONAL MOMENT: Analysts said Mahathir would not have resigned unless he was sure that Malaysia would not suffer the chaos seen in the Philippines and Indonesia when their strongman leaders, Ferdinand Marcos and Suharto, fell from power.

Diplomats said they were puzzled why Mahathir had resigned and then retracted if he really intended to go. It would appear a messy way of bowing out for one of Asia’s wiliest politicians.

People who know Mahathir say he seemed to have planned it alone, but emotion got the better of him at the crucial moment.

“I think the reason is he didn’t have the benefit of advice, even from his siblings. He was afraid to ask anyone in case it would just leak out,” commented an old cabinet colleague.

“He was so emotional that when he started crying there was a chain reaction through the assembly,” he said.

For all the confusion, analysts, diplomats and fellow UMNO officials said Mahathir’s timing looked good.

He has made an extraordinary comeback both at home and abroad since the Sept 11 attacks on the US. Internationally a reputation sullied by the sacking and jailing of Anwar Ibrahim, his former deputy, has been restored.

He recently visited the White House and the Vatican, as the West warmed to a rare strong moderate voice in the Muslim world.

HIGH NOTE: UMNO sources said Mahathir was determined to go out on a high note after delivering the country from the economic abyss of the 1997/98 Asian crisis and UMNO from its disastrous showing in the 1999 election. Analysts agreed.

“If he is leaving, he’s going on a high having effectively recouped himself from the catastrophe of 1999,” political commentator Karim Raslan told Reuters.

That was when UMNO won less than half of the Malay vote in the wake of Anwar’s dismissal. Anwar is serving 15 years for sex and corruption charges he says were cooked up after he challenged Mahathir’s leadership in 1998.

One of his sons, Mokhzani Mahathir, dismissed talk that his father’s resignation was a stunt, that he sought to strengthen his grip on the party to push through reforms ethnic Malays would find hard to swallow after years of special privileges to help them compete against the ethnic Chinese who dominate business.

“No, no, that’s not it. He just felt it was time for someone else to carry on,” Mokhzani Mahathir told Reuters, explaining his father’s actions on Saturday. “We didn’t even know,” he said.—Reuters