Malaysia's Najib Razak attacked by predecessor Mahathir Mohamad

Malaysia's prime minister Najib Razak has come under attack from one of his predecessors, Mahathir Mohamad, who has argued that the incumbent does not have what it takes to secure victory in the next general election.

The development comes as Mr Najib, a moderate technocrat, has survived repeated attempts to undermine his position from within his United Malays National Organisation (Umno), since the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition won the most parliamentary seats in the last election in 2013.

Foreign investors are closely watching the position of Mr Najib, who has successfully pushed through much-needed fiscal reforms including the implementation this week of Malaysia's first general sales tax, at 6 per cent.

"Umno members and their leaders must wake up to the fact that Umno and BN will lose if Najib leads Umno until [the next general election]," Mr Mahathir, now 90 years old, wrote on his blog.

Mr Mahathir ran Malaysia as prime minister for 22 years until he stepped down in 2003. But he still wields influence within Umno, the main party in BN, which has dominated the country since its independence from Britain in 1957.

Mr Mahathir has periodically criticised Mr Najib and was instrumental in the ousting in 2009 of his successor Abdullah Badawi, Mr Najib's direct predecessor.

However, the latest attack is the most direct on Mr Najib yet, and indicates that discontent among conservatives in Umno is still simmering over the relatively lacklustre performance of BNl the last election in 2013.

While it won the most seats, it lost the popular vote to the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed last month in a long-running sodomy case that critics said was an establishment-backed attempt to remove him from political life.

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"There's a lot of rumbling on the ground, but no one wants to make the first move," a former senior Umno cabinet member said in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, last week.

Chia Shuhui, a Malaysia analyst at BMI Research in Singapore, pointed out that Mr Najib had last month won the overwhelming support of key party figures.

"While Mahathir has been sniping at Najib for some time, Najib does actually hold a lot of party loyalty," she said.

Mr Najib is also benefiting from sharp divisions that have opened up within the opposition - itself a coalition of three parties - on top of the loss of its leader to jail.

The Democratic Action party, the largely ethnic Chinese member of PR, is at loggerheads with its Islamist counterpart over the legally disputed implementation of hudud, an extreme form of sharia law, in the state of Kelatan to the north-east.

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