Victorious Mahathir to name his new Cabinet on Friday

Victorious Mahathir to name his new Cabinet on Friday

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, fresh from winning an unprecedented fifth mandate in polls but facing a resurgent opposition, will announce his new cabinet on Friday, his office said.

Mahathir was not expected to make major changes, but his cabinet choices will mark his first moves towards countering strong electoral gains by Islamic fundamentalist parties.

Mahathir, who has kept an unusually low profile since the polls, will meet the king at 10 a.m. (9 a.m. Jakarta time) and unveil his new government at 4 p.m., the Prime Minister's Department said. Ministers will be sworn in on Tuesday.

Mahathir's 14-party Barisan Nasional coalition won a three- quarters majority in the lower house of parliament in the early general elections, held on Nov. 29.

But his United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the coalition's main party, lost ground to the Parti Islam se- Malaysia (PAS) in parts of the Malay heartland.

UMNO's setbacks have complicated Mahathir's task as he needs to meet the Islamic fundamentalist challenge without alienating ethnic Chinese and Indians who now hold a larger portion of the Barisan Nasional's seats in parliament.

PAS president Fadzil Noor was named opposition leader on Wednesday, putting a Moslem into the post for the first time since Mahathir assumed power in 1981.

PAS's gains have given Mahathir reason to pause, and he was taking longer than usual to name his federal cabinet. After winning a landslide victory in 1995, he took a week to name his government, while this year it will be nearly two weeks.

The stock market has been rattled by speculation that Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin, the architect of Malaysia's capital controls, might leave the post, raising questions about the continuity of economic policy.

Political analysts had speculated that Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz or Mahathir's former foe-turned-ally Razaleigh Hamzah were vying for Daim's job.

But most believed the finance minister would stay on.

"I think Tun Daim will stay where he is," said Abdul Razak Baginda, head of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center think tank. "The question is where is the PM going to fit Razaleigh.

He's the interesting character -- the kind of X-factor." Razaleigh, who led a failed rebellion against Mahathir in the late 1980s, is now considered a possible successor to the 73-year-old leader.

There was speculation that Razaleigh might be made education minister, a post previously held by Najib Tun Razak, son of Malaysia's second prime minister. Najib, who just survived the election, could be moved to the Foreign Ministry.

While UMNO was expected to remain dominant in the cabinet, an opposition party said it wanted more ethnic Chinese, arguing that this group had rescued UMNO in the polls.

The outgoing 59-member cabinet had five ministers and seven deputy ministers who were Chinese.

Meantime, an opposition party alleged on Thursday it had collected evidence of "massive cheating nationwide" in Malaysia's elections last week.

"We are compiling the evidence and will soon be filing election petitions," said Marina Yusoff, who heads an election supervisory committee for the National Justice Party.

Marina alleged the Nov. 29 poll, which returned the National Front coalition to power with more than a two-thirds majority, was not free and fair.

In a statement, she urged the Election Commission to investigate irregularities and "when proven correct" to declare the elections null and void, and call for fresh polls.

Alternatively a royal commission of inquiry should be convened immediately, Marina said.