Mahathir's victory boost for business

Mahathir's victory boost for business

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's
landslide victory in Malaysia's ninth general election will be a
tremendous boost for investor confidence, businessmen and
analysts said yesterday.

"This is exactly the stability that businessmen would like to
see," said Yong Poh Kon, vice president of the Federation of
Malaysian Manufacturers.

Analysts said businesses were anxious for Mahathir's ambitious
economic polices not to be disrupted, calling the prime minister
Malaysia's most pro-investment leader yet.

Mahathir's coalition had campaigned on its formidable record
of more than eight percent annual growth during the last seven
years. The National Front also promised to sustain annual
expansion at seven percent for another 25 years to lift Malaysia
to fully-industrialized status.

"This is a tremendous endorsement for Mahathir and for Vision
2020," said Jomo Kwame Sundaram, professor of economics at
University Malaya, referring to Malaysia's quest to become fully
industrialized by that year.

The sweeping win gave Mahathir a comfortable 84 percent
majority in parliament, up from 70.5 percent in the 1990 polls
and well over the two-thirds majority needed to pass
constitutional amendments.

Analysts said the prime minister's victory was especially
significant in the key battleground of northern Penang state,
where the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) had made a
strong bid to prise state control from the Front.

Penang is dubbed the "Silicon Valley" of Southeast Asia being
host to multi-national technology corporations such as Germany's
Robert Bosch, Japan's Matsushita and US-based Seagate, Hewlett-
Packard and Intel Corp.

But voters in the showcase industrial state -- fearful of a
clamp on state funds -- opted to give the Front even wider
control of the state. Mahathir's party won 32 of the 33 state
seats in Penang and all but three of the 11 parliamentary seats.

"Malaysia as a fast-developing country still needs a lot of
infrastructural development and obviously states with the same
party in power as the federal government will find it easier to
get allocations for development funds," Yong said.

But some analysts said the Front's overwhelming majority also
endorses an increasing tolerance of corruption.

"My fear is that the strengthened majority of the Front will
be widely seen in business circles as tolerance of money politics
and an increasing intimacy between politics and business," Jomo
said.

The DAP and other opposition parties had argued that despite
the robust economic record, Mahathir's government was riddled
with corruption and mismanagement.

"People are also going to conclude that to get on the inside
track of business, you basically have to buy your influence,"
Jomo added.