Not So Fast

Three weeks after taking over as Malaysia's Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is revealing that beneath his smooth exterior is a shrewd politician who just might play rough. Last week, Abdullah told reporters that two costly infrastructure projects awarded to businessman Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary, one of the favorite industrialists of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, might be renegotiated. In the case of the Bakun dam, a huge hydroelectric project on Borneo, Abdullah said he was "not sure" whether the government would resort to privatization. (Syed Mokhtar's GIIG Capital signed an agreement last August to buy 60% of the dam operator from the government.) Just 10 days before Mahathir resigned in October, a consortium led by Syed Mokhtar was awarded a $3.8 billion contract to build a railroad from the Thai border to Singapore. Abdullah now says negotiations were not completed. Edmund Terence Gomez, a political scientist at Kuala Lumpur's University of Malaya, says that with a general election probably only months away, Abdullah "will look good in showing that he is against the appearances of cronyism."