PHOTOGRAPH FOR TIME BY ANDREW MOORE

All for one: Mahathir and his chosen successor, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi (second from left) and other party leaders

Regime Change
	After 22 years in power, Mahathir Mohamad is stepping down. Can Malaysia thrive without him?
	By Simon Elegant | Kuala Lumpur

Posted Monday, October 13, 2003; 21:00 HKT
Twenty years ago, Puchong was a typical sleepy Malaysian town. It had one main street lined by rows of two-story shop houses out of which the mostly Chinese population did business, selling goods and services to the surrounding oil-palm plantations, tin mines and rubber smallholdings. Though it lies only 18 kilometers from the center of Kuala Lumpur, Puchong could have been any of hundreds of similar towns throughout the country: the indigenous Malays largely working the land, the Chinese dominating business in the towns.

Today, looking at Puchong, you could be excused for thinking that 100 years had passed, not just 20. Puchong is a thriving metropolis with a multiracial population of almost 560,000, many of them Malays working in nearby factories, offices and small businesses. Now effectively a suburb of the capital, it boasts two four-lane highways that are filled with streams of cars from early morning until late at night. Among the high-rise apartment blocks and shopping malls are rows of shops offering KFC chicken, McDonald's hamburgers and scores of cell-phone models. There is even a pair of superstores from international giants Carrefour and Tesco, and the huge parking lot of each could comfortably house all the vehicles owned by the townsfolk back in the early 1980s.

Just as it was once a microcosm of the old order, the bustling Puchong of today is a neat symbol of the new Malaysia as envisioned by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad: modern, prosperous, peaceful, admired. Mahathir, 78, is scheduled to step down at the end of this month, after 22 years in power. His retirement signals the end of an era during which, through the sheer force of his convictions and his personality, he transformed the character of an entire nation and its people. Last week, at a press conference in Bali after his final attendance at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Mahathir was in characteristically feisty form—cracking jokes, skewering other governments (he lambasted Australia for playing "deputy sheriff" in the region) and showing no sign that his imminent departure was weighing on his mind.

He was leaving, he said, because "everything is in place. That's the right time to leave. You don't want to leave after people kick you out." Belying his good humor, however, Mahathir's departure raises difficult questions about Malaysia's future. Can the economic momentum be sustained?

Can Mahathir's successor, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, match the achievements of his predecessor? Will there be greater democracy and transparency?

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