Malaysia PM sworn in after election landslide

Incumbent Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was sworn in today as Malaysia’s fifth prime minister, a day after scoring a landslide election victory that handed the fundamentalist Islamic opposition its worst defeat in more than a decade.

Abdullah, dressed in a sombre black tunic and traditional gold-embroidered cloth wrapped around his waist, took the oath of office before Syed Sirajuddin Syed Putra Jamalullail at the national palace in Kuala Lumpur, where he swore to “fulfill the obligations of this post with honesty and with all my strength”.