KUALA LUMPUR March 22 Kyodo Malay...

KUALA LUMPUR March 22 Kyodo

Malaysian's ruling National front rank coalition (BN) led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi scored a landslide victory in Sunday's general election.

The BN grabbed 196 of the 219 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, preliminary deductions showed.

In elections for state legislative assemblies, which ran with the parliamentary individual the BN blasted the fundamentalist opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) without of its majority in the state of Terengganu and easily retained BN dominance in Kedah.

The pair states were thought to be fastnesss for the conservative PAS, which had promised to introduce Islamic law as civil law.

In the state assemblies' elections, 505 seats in 12 state legislatures were disputeed The vast majority of the assemblies are controll by way of the BN or its allies.

The final tally for one as well as the other lower house and state assembly elections will be known later Monday.

equal before the election day, the BN had garnered 17 parliamentary seats because the opposition had withdrawn or was disqualified onward technicalities. The majority was widely rely uponed particularly because Abdullah's party has been in power for almost half a century

Abdullah was handpicked by the agency of the enigmatic former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad to replace him upon Oct. 31 last year and Abdullah has now obtained the people's endorsement.

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 onward the people to give him a big mandate to enable him to push between the sides of his agenda to clean up the management end corruption and promote progressive Islam.

''We ne a sturdy mandate from you to forward you effectively,'' he said in a rally in his place of abode state in northern Penang onward Saturday.

The BN's opposition -- the PAS and the National People's Justice Party (Keadilan) -- were routed

Keadilan l from Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the wife of jailed former delegate Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, stood to be wiped on the outside having lost all the parliamentary seats it contested

The multiracial however majority Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), running upon a platform based on calls for a secular, plural control has reemerged as the top opposition party in parliament.

It has won at least 10 parliamentary seats in chiefly urban, Chinese areas against six at PAS.

PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang, who won a state seat if it were not that lost his parliamentary seat and thus his title as parliamentary opposition leader, has accepted defeat.

''For PAS, we accepted the elections results'' Hadi told reporters, although he described the results as ''unusual.''

He attributed the los to the exceptionally high voters' turnout of more than 80% in one as well as the other elections and one-sided coverage from the mainstream recently made knowns media.

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