Badawi plans to overhaul cabinet after landslide election victory

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, fresh from a landslide election victory, will overhaul his cabinet and restructure the finance ministry next week, sources close to the leadership said yesterday.

Badawi is expected to retain the finance minister's post himself. However, when a new, enlarged cabinet is sworn in next Tuesday around one-third could be new, the sources said.

The premier vowed not to slacken his anti-corruption campaign following his landslide election win and asked for more time to consider whether to dump old hands from his Cabinet.

A day after being sworn in as leader with Malaysia's biggest-ever parliamentary majority, Badawi said his main tasks would be fighting corruption, improving the performance of public servants and pushing for an ethics code for lawmakers.

"These are all competing priorities, and I have to attend to all of them," Abdullah told radio network Hitz.FM. "He didn't have the mandate before. But he does now," said one insider, adding up to 40 percent of the cabinet will be new.

Abdullah is expected to stay out of the public eye until Thursday as he finalises his choices, but on Friday he is expected to name the chief ministers of Malaysia's states.

Twelve of the country's 13 states were won by the multi-racial Barisan Nasional coalition, while the alliance took more than 90 percent of seats in parliament.

Abdullah made slight changes in January to the cabinet he inherited from Mahathir, but now he will axe and promote members of his own United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) without fear of any backlash from party warlords. The sources outlined several changes to key positions.

The Finance ministry was likely to be split, with Mustapa Mohammed, head of the National Economic Action Council (NEAC), given additional charge of the powerful Economic Planning Unit.

The EPU is in charge of privatisation and the award of projects while the NEAC guides economic policy. Mustapa is a trained economist, a technocrat with a spotless reputation who served under Mahathir's two-time finance minister Daim Zainuddin.

Nor Mohamed Yakcop was likely to be retained as Second Finance Minister, overseeing the Treasury and its investment arm Khazanah Nasional and the Employees Provident Fund. Meanwhile, there were reports of minor scuffles in Terengganu on Monday night between riot police wielding sticks and PAS supporters who refused to disperse after gathering outside several government buildings.