KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - The economic downturn is allowing Malaysia's leader to chip away at an affirmative action program for Malay Muslims that has been considered virtually untouchable in the past.

Soon after taking office in April, Prime Minister Najib Razak scrapped a requirement for 30 percent Malay ownership of companies in certain service industries. This week, he cut the ownership requirement to 12.5 percent for companies that want to list on the stock exchange.

Najib, who is Malay, has also promised to award more government scholarships next year based on academic excellence, rather than racial quotas.

The moves are carefully calculated to avoid angering Malay voters. They touch only a few of the benefits given to Malays, who make up nearly 60 percent of the country's 28 million people. Still, even these changes would have been unthinkable not long ago. Whether they go further will depend on the Malay reaction and whether the economy recovers.

"What Najib has done is to change the way the game is being played, but the game is still on," said James Chin, a political science professor at Monash University in Malaysia. "Malays are still being protected and given things on a silver platter."

Two developments have opened the door to change.

Malaysia has fallen into recession for the first time in a decade, giving Najib political leeway to relax the rules on Malay ownership in a bid to woo foreign investment.

Meanwhile, Najib's ruling coalition is facing its first severe challenge since coming to power in 1957. And the challenge is fueled in part by anger among ethnic Chinese and Indians about affirmative action for the Malays. Chinese are about 25 percent of the population, and Indians, 8 percent.

The relaxing of affirmative action could help Najib's coalition, the National Front, regain the support of Chinese and Indian voters, who overwhelmingly deserted the government in elections last year.

The National Front lost its long-standing two-thirds majority in parliament and lost control of five of the Southeast Asian nation's 13 states, the worst performance in its five decades in power.

"He is hoping to get the economy back on track and win back the non-Malay ground," said Chin, who thinks Najib may call an election in 2011. "Everything he is doing now is to gear for the next general elections."

The government introduced affirmative action in 1971, following 1969 riots fueled by Malay discontent with the relative affluence of the ethnic Chinese. Dubbed the New Economic Policy, the program gives preference to Malays in government contracts, business, jobs, education and housing.