IT IS about 100 days since the leadership of Malaysia changed hands after 61 years of rule by one party. The electoral victory in May of Pakatan Harapan (PH), a coalition of parties, startled many people in Malaysia and beyond. The upset also surprised PH itself. Most members of the cabinet are still struggling to get the hang of what being in power entails. Malaysia’s nonagenarian new prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad (pictured), is an exception. He already has plenty of form as a national leader.

Dr Mahathir had previously run the country for more than two decades as a leader of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party which until the election had dominated Malaysian politics since independence from Britain in 1957. He had even mentored his ousted predecessor, Najib Razak, who now stands charged with graft, abuse of power and money-laundering. Back when its success at the polls seemed most unlikely, PH made bold pledges about what it would achieve in office. But the disparity of experience between the fledgling ministers and their grizzled leader is hindering its efforts.

The new administration has made at least some progress in most of the areas in which it had promised early results. These include action against Mr Najib and others over the scandal at 1MDB, a state investment fund from which $4.5bn disappeared during the previous administration; the abolition of an unpopular goods-and-services tax (GST); and the reintroduction of certain fuel subsidies. PH had promised an investigation into whether megaprojects involving foreign countries were worth the money. The result: infrastructure deals, including pipelines built with Chinese help and a high-speed rail project planned with Singapore, have either been cancelled or cut back.

But there are headwinds. Scrapping the GST will mean a fall in revenue: it brought in 45bn ringgit ($10.5bn) last year. This could be partly remedied by a new sales tax which the government plans to introduce in the coming weeks, and which is expected to be less onerous on consumers than the GST. High oil prices might also help meet the budget shortfall, since the government sucks up royalties from the state oil firm, Petronas. But there will still be fiscal pain, reckons Yeah Kim Leng of Sunway University in Kuala Lumpur.

The old man’s old style

Because of the inexperience of his cabinet, Dr Mahathir has, in effect, become chief of everything. This creates a bureaucratic bottleneck as he ponders investigations into 1MDB, diplomacy (he has already taken two trips to Japan and is due to visit China on August 17th) and ways of boosting economic growth (expected to be about 5% this year, down from nearly 6% in 2017).

PH vows to show greater respect for human rights than UMNO did. (Mr Najib’s henchmen often bullied journalists, activists and others.) However, the prime minister rules in the way he knows. He favours the advice of cronies, as well as of an unelected council of bigwigs selected by himself. His autocratic style can make people jump. Last month all the board members of Khazanah Nasional, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, resigned after he criticised their investment strategy (he said they were not doing enough to help firms owned by ethnic Malays).

Despite his self-deprecating jokes about his dictatorial style, Dr Mahathir is clearly reluctant to share power with others. But at least superficially, he has reduced the responsibilities that previously accompanied his job. Before he took over, the prime minister was also the minister of finance and supervisor of the election and anti-corruption commissions. Now Lim Guan Eng, a Chinese-Malaysian who once ran the state of Penang, is finance minister and the two commissions have been placed under the oversight of parliament.

Mr Lim’s appointment is an unusual move for Dr Mahathir, widely regarded as a champion of Malays and other indigenous groups (who make up 69% of the population) and the privileges accorded to them in Malaysia’s constitution. In a nod to the multiracial policies of PH’s dominant parties, the country now also has an ethnic-Indian attorney-general, the first non-Muslim to hold the post.

However, the new government is unlikely to attempt radical reforms to racial policies that favour indigenous people, for example in admission to public universities and recruitment for government jobs. The ruling coalition hangs together in part because all of its parties have agreed to uphold this system. Politicians of every stripe fear a backlash from ethnic-Malay voters should their privileges be curtailed.