Word: halim
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...designed to create a group of model entrepreneurs among the country's majority ethnic Malays, was criticized at home and abroad as opaque, unfair, hugely wasteful and largely ineffective. The 1997 crisis hit Mahathir's handpicked favorites particularly hard; their inefficiently run and deeply indebted companies such as Halim Saad's Renong, a government-controlled conglomerate, and Yahaya Ahmad's DRB-Hicom needed huge government bailouts just to stay afloat...
...Meanwhile, former highflyers have been falling from grace, signaling to some that Malaysia's crony system was on the way out. Halim Saad of Renong and Tajudin Ramli, who piloted the national carrier Malaysia Airlines to record losses during his eight-year tenancy as CEO, have been replaced by professional managers. In January, the new management of Malaysia Airlines filed a police report alleging irregularities in the management of the airline's cargo division during Tajudin's tenure. Police are remaining tight-lipped about the continuing investigation, but according to local press reports they have to date interviewed a dozen...
...bullish as some observers are about the country's new direction, plenty of reservations remain. Mokhtar's detractors say he appears to be just the latest rider on Malaysia's crony-go-round. "Mokhtar is enjoying a rapid rise like Halim Saad and Tajudin Ramli and is closely aligned with Mahathir," says Terence Gomez, who teaches economics at Kuala Lumpur's University of Malaya. The issue has roiled the usually placid waters of Malaysia's press. Writing in the business weekly The Edge, journalist P. Gunasegeram penned a column about Mokhtar titled, "When One Man Gets Too Much." Gunasegeram chronicles...
...With the backing of the government, big dreams are possible. But what one former Cabinet minister calls the "fatal embrace of Mahathir Mohamad" also carries burdens. "What they don't realize," says another longtime Mahathir watcher, speaking of men like Mokhtar, Halim and Tajudin, "is that the PM doesn't care about them individually. He only cares about results, and if he thinks they can get things done, he'll keep loading them down with projects until they sink...
...Afghan mujahedin, and Ittehad-i-Islami, which has a few thousand underfunded troops in southern Afghanistan. These groups once opposed the Taliban, but Afghan intelligence sources confirm that the old disputes have been sidelined in the face of a common enemy: America and its Afghan allies. Astad Abdul Halim, Ittehad-i-Islami's Kandahar commander, blasts the province's U.S.-backed governor, Gul Agha Sherzai. "If Sherzai continues the bad acts he is doing now," he says, "there will be a time very soon when we will attack...