Malaysia's opposition alleged fraud and demanded new elections yesterday following a wholesale rout by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's coalition that confronts them with near-extinction in parliament and state governments.
Meanwhile, Abdullah faced expectations to fulfill campaign promises to fight corruption and could replace one-third of his Cabinet with a lineup decided as early as Saturday, the pro-government New Straits Times newspaper reported. Some ministries may be restructured.
Voters dealt the opposition, led by the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, a stunning blow in Sunday's general elections by delivering Abdullah's secular National Front coalition 90 percent of the seats in the 219-member parliament, based on 65 percent of the popular vote.
The Islamic party, known as PAS, saw its parliamentary bloc collapse from 27 to seven, while the People's Justice Party was nearly obliterated, losing four seats and keeping only the one held by leader Azizah Ismail, wife of jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.
"If Abdullah doesn't take action, people will compare this result elections held during Saddam's rule in Iraq," Ezam Mohamad Noor, youth chief of the Justice Party, told a news conference.
The Justice Party accused the Election Commission of pro-government bias and said it would file a legal challenge to have the polling declared invalid and for new elections to be held.
The challenge is highly unlikely to be successful. Malaysia's courts lost much independence under the 22-year rule of Mahathir Mohamad. Judges have regained some of their authority in recent years, but important decisions rarely go against the government.
The Justice Party alleged irregularities, echoed by other opposition parties, that the commission maintained two sets of voter rolls, failed to list some registered voters and over-registered others, incorrectly moved voters to other districts, and had as many as 100 voters at a time listed at one address.
But the parties were divided over what steps to take. Lim Kit Siang, veteran leader of the multireligious Democratic Action Party, returned to parliament after a five-year hiatus, helping boost his group's total seats from 10 to 12.
Lim contented himself with a call for the resignation of Election Commission chairman Abdul Rashid, and urged Abdullah to name a Cabinet free of corruption "as an acid test of his political will."
PAS, which called for a hard-line religious state in this modern, tolerant Muslim-majority country, has filed an official demand for an investigation into election proceedings and urged the postponement of establishing a new government until the probe is completed.
The Islamic party had been expected to build on strong gains from the 1999 polls and capture a third state assembly in northern Malaysia, but instead lost oil-rich Terengganu and clung to its 14-year stronghold in Kelantan with a three-seat majority.
The spiritual leader of PAS, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, claimed that God willed the party's survival in Kelantan and was sworn in late Tuesday to a fourth term as the state's chief minister.
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