JACK Welch, the retired legendary chief executive of GE, related his less-than-pleasant task before leaving office of personally telling the three or four other capable candidates under him that they were not his choice to succeed him.

There are two points to this observation. The obvious is that GE under Welch had no shortage of capable talent for the top slot; the second, Welch's acute sense of obligation (and class) to let the other accomplished contenders hear the bad news first and directly from him.

A common lament to my recent call for Abdullah Badawi to step down was the lack of solid candidates to succeed him, best expressed by one of the government's backbencher in Parliament. Although when he said it, Zaid Ibrahim was merely trying to praise Abdullah Badawi, however awkwardly.