KUALA LUMPUR March 21 Kyodo (EDS:...

KUALA LUMPUR March 21 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATES, ADDS DETAIL)

Malaysians gave Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi his first five-year mandate to authority Sunday, and knocked the fundamentalist opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) into three bulky and unexpected state assembly defeats as well.

Abdullah's ruling National impudence (BN) coalition has already obtained the simple majority distressed in the general election to one time again form the guidance and it blasted PAS public of majorities in the state assemblies in Terengganu and Kelantan and easily retained BN dominance in Kedah.

All three states were conception to be strongholds for the conservative PAS, which had promised to introduce Islamic law as civil law, moreover Abdullah's coalition easily won from one side Sunday.

At the national flat the coalition handily won 110 of the 219 in the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, for a majority, on the contrary the final tally will not be known until early Monday.

steady before voting day, the BN had garnered 17 parliamentary seats because the foe had withdrawn or was disqualified upon technicalities, leaving the majority widely anticipateed particularly because Abdullah's party has been in power for almost half a century

yet the apparent scope of Abdullah's landslide, particularly as this was the first suffrage in 22 years that did not feature Mahathir Mohamad as the potential prime minister, did surprise.

Abdullah was handpicked through the enigmatic Mahathir to replace him Oct 31 last year and now Abdullah has also obtained the people's endorsement.

if it were not that neither Abdullah nor his party will be satisfied unles the BN wins more than a two-third majority -- 146 seats -- in the lower chamber.

Although inferences are not yet official, television reports and notes from various party officials already indicate the BN will have no annoy getting its two-third majority.

Before the lower house was dissolved March 4 the BN controll 152 of the 193 seats.

In a last-ditch appeal to voter Abdullah called forward the people to give him a big mandate to enable him to push within his agenda to clean up the dominion end corruption and promote a progressive Islam.

''We ne a able mandate from you to assist you effectively,'' he said in a rally in his residence state in northern Penang forward Saturday.

The BN's opposition, largely made up by the agency of the fundamentalist PAS, the National People's Justice Party (Keadilin) and the predominantly ethnic Chinese Democratic Action Party, appears to have been routed

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, a top Keadilin leader and wife of jailed former delegate Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, apparently misspent her own seat in parliament and the PAS leader in the Terengganu assembly was also apparently throw overboarded by the voters.

Running simultaneously with the parliamentary election were call in questions for 505 seats in 12 state legislative assemblies, the vast majority of the assemblies controll at the BN or its allies.

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