Mahathir government caps biggest ever win
Mahathir government caps biggest ever win
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad capped this week's landslide victory in the Malaysian elections by snapping up the last undeclared seat in the north Borneo state of Sabah yesterday, the Election Commission said.
The commission delayed polls in the Kinabatangan seat until yesterday as officials in the constituency forgot to open a polling station on April 24, the first day of the elections.
Victory in the Sabah seat underscored Mahathir's National Front coalition's biggest ever election victory. The coalition has 162 of the 192 seats in the expanded parliament.
The coalition also won 10 of the 11 state assemblies contested, its only setback being the failure to recapture Kelantan from fundamentalist Moslem All-Malaysian Islamic party.
Mahathir met King Ja'afar Tuanku Abdul Rahman at the national palace in Kuala Lumpur yesterday to seek ceremonial consent to form a new government.
The 69-year-old prime minister said on Wednesday that he would form a new cabinet next week after consultations with National Front leaders.
"This week is too short. It will take a bit more time to form the cabinet," Mahathir said.
He said he would not expand his 29-man cabinet despite the increased majority and bigger pool of parliamentarians.
"We don't want a top-heavy administration despite the large numbers," Mahathir said.
Mahathir's cabinet has six vacancies after one minister retired, one lost his seat and four others contested state seats.
Meanwhile, Malaysia's largest opposition party, humiliated in the just-concluded general elections, swore yesterday it would make a comeback and dismissed rumors that its chief was quitting.
"The DAP shall overcome the present setback in no time at all. It shall climb back from the valley and get back all the seats and more by the next general election," Tan Seng Giaw, national vice-chairman for the Democratic Action Party (DAP), told reporters.
The DAP, a largely ethnic-Chinese party, was thrashed by Mahathir's predominantly Malay National Front in Tuesday's polls.
The opposition party only won nine of 192 parliament seats and 11 of the 394 state seats in the polls, compared to National Front's 162 parliamentary seats and 338 in the states.
Tan said following its worst election defeat in its 29 years, the DAP has been the target of many rumors, including that its chief Lim Kit Siang was resigning from politics.
Lim, Malaysia's opposition leader of 25 years, suffered his worst embarrassment in the polls by losing the party's battle to capture Malaysia's wealthiest state, Penang in the north.
Lim was trounced in a one-on-one battle against Penang National Front head and chief minister Koh Tsu Koon and has declared he would not make another bid for the state.
Tan, a physician, said newspapers have speculated he was going into private practice after the elections and that Lim was also ready to quit politics.
"Please stop talking about Kit Siang or me or others resigning. The DAP shall have a post-mortem on the election," said Tan.
He attributed the National Front's landslide victory to unfair coverage by the largely pro-government media and rumors that a huge DAP win would result in racial riots.
Tan said euphoria over the nation's booming economy had helped the National Front but warned that the good times may not be on for long.
"The stock market is not doing well. The public and private sectors are competing for savings. The current account deficit continues to be big. All Malaysians must be prepared for economic depression," said Tan.
Editorial -- Page 4
Photo -- Page 14