Abdullah Badawi, the Malaysian prime minister, vowed yesterday not to resign, in spite of seeing the longruling National Front government suffer its biggest election setback since independence in 1957.
He rejected a call by Mahathir Mohamad, his predecessor, to step down. "Mahathir's demand is the start of a bloody leadership fight," said Bridget Welsh, a Malaysian political analyst at Johns Hopkins University, near Washington.
Even if Mr Abdullah is appointed today by the king to form a new government, he faces a challenge this year when the United Malays National Organisation, the dominant government party, is scheduled to hold party elections. He could face a revolt unless he resigns before then.
In the weekend election, the government lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time since 1969, gaining 138 seats in the expanded 222-member parliament, with some results still to be declared. The opposition had won 82 seats, far better than predicted.
A coalition of the three main opposition parties took an unprecedented five state governments, including Penang, Selangor, Perak and Kedah, and Kuala Lumpur, the capital, while keeping control of Kelantan.
The change in the political landscape could unsettle the Kuala Lumpur stock market.
The ethnic Malay-dominated government fell victim to a simultaneous assault from the two main centres of opposition: the Chinese-based Democratic Action party and conservative Muslim Malays represented by the Pas party. The two parties had agreed to join an alliance engineered by Anwar Ibrahim of the People's Justice party.
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