Mahathir takes to the Malay stump For a man who has been out of power for almost a decade, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad seems in no mood to embrace the quiet routines of retirement. He maintains three offices, including one high up in the gleaming twin Petronas Towers, one of his signature projects while in power. Another is in a vast space in a building near the city's Islamic Arts Museum, where he receives a stream of visitors as he sits behind a wide desk, dressed in a dark green safari suit. As the country he ran for 22 years heads for a cliffhanger election, Mr Mahathir is still suspected by many as a powerful string-puller behind the scenes as the dominant United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and its coalition partners fight to convince voters they deserve another term in office. The election is set to be the closest since Malaysia won independence from Britain in 1957. The opposition, led by Mr Mahathir's former deputy and political nemesis Anwar Ibrahim, believes it has its best chance yet of riding a wave of disaffection over entrenched corruption to unseat Barisan Nasional and prime minister Najib Razak, when the poll is held on May 5. "If it is a weak government of course there will be a loss of confidence in the country's leadership and there may be changes in policies, which would affect foreign investors," Mr Mahathir says, when asked what effect only a slim majority for the ruling coalition would be, and seen by analysts as the most likely outcome. But even if there is a small majority, I think that BN [Barisan] would try to adhere to the policies of being business friendly or being interested in the economic growth of the country. Yet Mr Mahathir is clearly not willing to sit back and let events take their course. The former medical doctor, 87, has hit the campaign trail and this week appears at rallies in three states, including Johor, an industrialised state opposite Singapore, where the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition is hoping to unseat Barisan. While backing Barisan, there are hints that Mr Mahathir believes Malaysia - one of the world's most economically successful multi-ethnic experiments - is not quite the same since he was in power. I cannot be a judge from my own performance, but I get around and I meet people and they don't seem to be having a grudge against me. If I am giving a talk, for example, lots of people turn up to listen to the old dictator" - using a nickname bandied around by some of his critics. People feel that things were clear cut before, they knew where they stood. Now they don't know where they stand," he says in an interview. Chinese voters in Malaysia's subtly balanced ethnic mix, which includes majority Malays and a smaller minority of Indians, have deserted Barisan since the last election in 2008. That year, Barisan lost its two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time, a shock that still reverberates as its candidates fan out across Malaysia's 13 states at the start of the official two weeks of campaigning. Moderate urban Malays, too, have turned their backs on Barisan, disgusted by pervasive allegations of corruption in the award of government contracts to Umno cronies. The calculus is further complicated by about 2.5m new, young voters on the electoral roll, the largest such influx in any election. Yet Mr Mahathir says this election will be "much more racial now than it was during my time." The Chinese ... are making demands for more Chinese-ness in this country. The Malays, on the other hand, are very opposed to that. So that will be the single issue that will affect both sides," he says. Such comments have sparked criticism that he is needlessly stirring up racial division in an attempt to shore up the Malay base for Barisan. Political analysts have interpreted an unprecedented number of independent candidates standing at this election as a sign of a shift away from old political and racial faultlines in Malaysia. Mr Mahathir thinks Barisan can still win. But, like a puppeteer tugging on a string, he hints at problems for Mr Najib if it fails to improve on its 2008 standing. His position will be very weak. There would be elements in the party who would want him to go and there would be elements who want to retain him because there [is] really no alternative for them.