Sceptics who thought Abdullah could never fill Mahathir's shoes have been stunned to see him take them up a size and commit the former leader irrevocably to his retirement slippers.

Abdullah, 64, achieved a bigger mandate Sunday than Mahathir, 78, was ever granted in his 22 years in power.

"It means Abdullah is his own man now. Mahathir's shadow has evaporated," said an analyst with a government-linked think-tank who requested anonymity.

A generation of Malaysians knew no leader other than Mahathir and when he announced his decision to retire at a party congress in June 2002 there were frenzied scenes as loyalists wept and begged him to stay on.

The country went into shock and the mainstream media fretted about the departure of a man who, even to foreigners, had become synonymous with Malaysia through his high-profile development drive and acid tongue.

But within days of Abdullah taking over on October 31 last year, Mahathir disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers and by the time the election campaign began he appeared to be deliberately kept in the background by his own party.

"Abdullah has very cleverly distanced himself from his predecessor but at the same time he acknowledges Mahathir's contribution," the analyst said. "Mahathir was seen as a liability for the election because he reminds people of the past and you really don't know what he's going to say."

In the last elections under Mahathir's leadership in 1999 the ruling National Front suffered a major setback, losing a swathe of seats, mainly to the fundamentalist Islamic Party (PAS).

Abdullah, whose quiet, gentlemanly style is in sharp contrast to Mahathir's abrasiveness, not only won them back but regained a state government from PAS and took the National Front's parliamentary majority from 77 percent to 90 percent.

The final parliamentary results announced Tuesday showed the National Front coalition with 198 seats, the Democratic Action Party with 12, PAS with seven and one each for the National Justice Party (Keadilan) and an independent.

Ahead of the election, analysts warned that if Abdullah made a weak showing, he would likely be challenged for the presidency of his United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which heads the coalition.

"But the landslide win shows he will be in power for a while," said Robert Broadfoot, managing director of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.

Mahathir appears to have accepted his eclipse gracefully, though he did suggest in an interview with AFP ahead of the elections that his low profile was of his own making.

"I am not going to be interfering in policies, or appointments, whatever. I have distanced myself completely from the leadership in that sense," he said.

"I will be more free after the elections, I will not be a member of parliament anymore. But from the number of (international) invitations that I get, I will be quite busy writing speeches."

Mahathir said he was also planning to write a memoir. It may be the final chapter in the political career of a man both loved and loathed as he transformed his country in the space of two decades from a sleepy tropical backwater into one of the world's top 20 trading nations.

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