PM to announce decision on Tues or Wed

KUALA LUMPUR: KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will announce his decision on whether he would defend the Umno presidency either tomorrow or by Wednesday.

The Prime Minister also hopes to hold a Barisan Nasional supreme council meeting on Wednesday to brief component party leaders on the revised leadership transition plan.

Abdullah, who is also Umno president, said Barisan leaders had indicated their wish to be briefed on the plan and what to expect since the Umno president would also become the coalition’s chairman and the nation’s prime minister.

Some Barisan leaders had voiced their unhappiness over the lack of consultation within Barisan over the change in the transition plan.

Abdullah and his deputy Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had earlier agreed to a handing over of power in 2010, but the plan was brought forward with no date specified.

Umno’s general assembly and elections of top party posts has been moved from December this year to March 2009 to facilitate an early transfer of power.

The Prime Minister declined to reveal if he would also announce on Wednesday his decision on whether to defend his Umno presidency. He has said he will do so by Oct 9, when Umno divisions start their meetings.

“I will decide that by tomorrow (Tuesday) or Wednesday, you wait lah ... why so impatient?” he told reporters after chairing the third meeting of the Biotech International Advisory Panel at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on Monday.

When pressed further on whether he had actually already made his decision, he said: “If I tell you, then I am announcing it now. I am not intending to announce it now, right? You wait. After all, two, three or fours days is not too long, right?”

Asked if the Umno members who had offered themselves for the No 2 post had jumped he gun, he said it was their choice on when to announce their intention.

“Whether they want to announce early or whether they want to wait, it is entirely up to them,” he said.

Asked if the offers for candidacy was healthy for the party, he replied: “Believe me, after a while some of them will drop out, and in the end there may be only two, maybe even only one left.” On his key focus for his remaining time as Prime Minister, he said he still had work to do and he intended to fulfil the pledge on reforms he had made in the Barisan 2004 election manifesto.

“I know Datuk Zaid Ibrahim is not there anymore (referring to the de facto law minister who had resigned), but it does not mean that everything must stop.

“It was not his idea in the first place, it was mine, it was the 2004 manifesto, remember,” he said on judicial reforms that Zaid had been undertaking.

“What I promised, I must deliver,” Abdullah added.

ISA taint To a question on whether the recent Internal Security Act (ISA) detention of a journalist and an opposition Member of Parliament had tainted Malaysia’s image, he said the Home Minister was empowered to decided on such matters and had his reasons.

He said that it was unfortunate if this caused others to view Malaysia negatively, but every country had its own security measures, some even tougher than the ISA.

When pointed out that it was the ISA arrests that had caused Zaid to resign, Abdullah said: “The law minister is not involved (in the ISA decision) and it is the exclusivity of the Home Minister.”