Malaysian PM: No reforms will kill ruling party

MALAYSIA: Malaysia’s outgoing Prime Minister warned Thursday that the ruling party will perish if it continues with its old autocratic ways of silencing critics, jailing opponents and discriminating against minorities.

“We must come to our senses,” Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in a farewell speech to the annual congress of his United Malays National Organization party.

“UMNO faces a life and death situation - one that concerns our future and survival,” he said, delivering a brutally honest assessment about the shortcomings blamed for the party’s plunging popularity.

Abdullah, who is the party president, will hand over the position to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak at the end of the congress on Saturday. Najib will also take over the prime minister’s job from Abdullah next week in a carefully choreographed power transition aimed at reversing UMNO’s reversing fortunes.

UMNO is the centerpiece of the ruling National Front coalition that has governed Malaysia since 1957. But in last year’s elections, the National Front failed to get a two-thirds majority in Parliament for the first time in 40 years. It also ceded control of five of Malaysia’s 13 states to the opposition.

Much of the voter anger was directed at UMNO, whose leaders are widely perceived as corrupt, power-hungry and inefficient. The party is accused of subverting the judiciary, the police force and the bureaucracy. The Chinese and Indian minorities accuse UMNO of being a racist party that only looks after the interest of the majority Malays. Kuala Lumpur, Thursday, AP