The end of an era in Southeast Asia was marked Friday by bouquets and brickbats for controversial Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as he prepared to retire after 22 years in power.

Local newspapers published massive supplements of lavish praise for Mahathir, but he was snubbed by Australian Prime Minister John Howard and criticised by the United States congress.

Howard said in a radio interview he had no farewell message for Mahathir, who has regularly dismissed Australia's bid to be accepted as part of Asia, describing it recently as "some sort of transplant from another region".

In Washington, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in condemning Mahathir for his remarks at an Islamic summit in mid-October that Jews rule the world by proxy.

By a vote of 411 to 0, with one abstention, the lower chamber of Congress adopted a resolution condemning Mathahir's remarks as "incendiary" and "despicable".

"Incendiary rhetoric of this nature can be neither excused nor rationalized," the resolution read, decrying the "age-old stereotypes of Jewish global domination and grotesque anti-Semitism."

Media tributes

Mahathir, 77, acknowledged in one of his final news conferences on the eve of his retirement that his legacy was a controversial one.

Asked how he would like to be remembered, he said he did not mind if he was forgotten, but added: "They will not forget all - as Shakespeare has said, 'the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones'."

The "good", though, was the focus of today's media tributes, one of which described him as "the greatest Malaysian alive".

"No one can dispute his central accomplishment of transforming Malaysia from an agricultural backwater into a rapidly industrialising economy and manufacturing powerhouse," the New Straits Times said in an editorial.

At 3:00 pm Mahathir and his chosen successor, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi were to present themselves to King Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin at the national palace in a ceremony to be broadcast live on television.

Final punch out

Abdullah, 63, will be sworn-in as Malaysia's fifth prime minister since independence from Britain in 1957 and the two men will then travel separately to the prime minister's office in the new administrative capital of Putrajaya south of Kuala Lumpur.

At 4:45 pm, Mahathir will clock out, using the punch card system he introduced for civil servants a month after becoming prime minister in July

He has said he is looking forward to his retirement and plans to write his memoirs.

On Saturday, Abdullah will fly to his home state of Penang, where he will be given a festive welcome by some 25,000 supporters before spending the evening with his mother.

On Sunday, he gets down to work by visiting flood victims in the northern region and handing out aid packages before returning to Kuala Lumpur and clocking-in at the PM's office on Monday morning at 8:15 am. - AFP