Malaysia PM basks in vote triumph

By Jonathan Kent BBC, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia's general election had not been expected to produce shocks, but in the end it did.

The country's Prime Minister of five months, Abdullah Badawi, had asked the people to give him a strong mandate and they responded, beyond the ruling coalition's expectations.

The Malaysian media dubbed it the blue wave. The Prime Minister's ruling Barisan Nasional, or National Front, coalition with its dark blue flag washed across Malaysia and its opponents were swept away.

Mr Abdullah may have gained from an increased turnout in some areas

The main opposition party, Pas, which wants to introduce hard-line Islamic laws into Muslim dominated areas, suffered worst.

It boasted 26 MPs in the old 193-strong parliament. Now it has just seven in the enlarged 219-seat assembly.

Worse still it lost control of the state government in rural Terengganu and came within a few hundred votes of surrendering the neighbouring state of Kelantan - its supposedly impregnable stronghold.

Behaviour

One explanation may be that many of those who voted for the opposition four and a half years ago in protest at the highly controversial arrest and jailing of Malaysia's former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, were not endorsing Pas' plans for an Islamic state.

Faced with the reality of Pas rule, voters like Nina switched back.

She has just moved back to her family home in Terengganu after studying in Kuala Lumpur.

She is a Muslim and wears a tudong or headscarf - so hardly a young woman pushing the bounds of acceptable behaviour.

But neither she nor her friend Nizam, who are both in their 20s and work in a print shop in Kuala Terengganu, the state capital, think much of Pas.

"It's boring here," was Nina's verdict, while Nizam complained that his friends' band could not even play in public.

"When Barisan Nasional ruled we could have gigs at least three times a year. It was hard enough to get a permit for punk rock shows, but now when Pas rule we can't even get a permit for a gig once a year," he said.

I will deal with them, even if they're powerful Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi

The Prime Minister's advisers are in part crediting the swing to the many people who work in Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia's other large industrialised cities, but who choose to vote in their home states - and these voters appear to have little truck with Pas.

Indeed Pas seems to have suffered from an increased turnout in areas it held because those extra voters backed the government.

Mandate

The election's biggest winner was Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.

His appeal to the country had been "trust me", rather than "trust my government". He became Prime Minister and leader of Malaysia's dominant Umno party by appointment, having been hand picked by his predecessor, Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He needed a mandate, and he has got it; the swing to the government is being seen as a personal vote of confidence in him and an endorsement of his vision of Malaysia's future. It means that he can feel supremely confident of his position going into Umno's leadership elections later this year.

It also means that he can press ahead with the programme he has outlined since taking over.

His two pledges that seemed to have the greatest appeal for voters were his promises to tackle poverty and to eliminate corruption.

The latter may have the most dramatic consequences. People will be waiting for him to move against high profile suspects within the civil service, the business community and critically within his own government.

In a BBC interview on Monday Mr Abdullah promised; "I will deal with them, even if they're powerful."

People are already waiting for him to reshuffle his cabinet. That will provide a good indication of how Abdullah Badawi intends to use his newly won authority.