Is the end near for Taib Mahmud?

comments     Terence Netto     Published     Updated

COMMENT It must be the most closely guarded secret since when only a few people knew of the leukaemia that ultimately killed Abdul Razak Hussein, Malaysia's second prime minister, in January 1976.

Practically, none other than the principal himself can tell with certainty what Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud will reveal to the supreme council of his party, PBB, when it meets this morning at its headquarters in Semariang, several kilometers outside Kuching.

The fact that the Sarawak BN meets tomorrow at the same venue has triggered intense speculation that Taib, who will complete 33 years in office as CM on March 26 - a span characteristic of the tenures of dictators in one-party states, not of leaders of polities subject to periodic elections - has finally decided to call it a day.

It is a measure of the mystique Taib has diffused around him that even as the frenzy of speculation about what he intends revolves around his quitting the CM's post and elevation to the governorship of the state, there are those in his slipstream who feel that the CM is not leaving because much remains to be done and, more importantly, there is no successor who can accomplish what he has been able to: keep Umno out of Sarawak and prevent non-Muslim use of the term 'Allah' from being the divisive issue it is on the peninsula...

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