I feel that Abdullah Junid is over-generalising his statement regarding the outcome of the 11 ^th general election.

He first mentioned that the Malays "soundly rejected PAS' fundamentalist version of political Islam." First of all, PAS is not just a political party. It is an organisation that strives to implement Islam as a complete way of life for Muslims.

Politics is just one component of the whole complete system. And, yes, Islam is fundamentally moderate, so there is no need to say that we are moderate Muslims and others are fundamentalists.

Secondly, how can one conclude that the Malays rejected PAS only because of its Islamic message? There are so many other things that have nothing to do with Islam but more to do with the unfair and undemocratic conduct of the general election that caused the massive swing of votes.

The serial number on the ballot paper, the use of government agencies and civil servants, the bribing of voters with money, threatened government officials are just to name a few.

In Kelantan, though the swing of votes was 12 percent, they could still win rather easily based on the huge majority they obtained from 1999 election. PAS had already anticipated this swing, but they never anticipated the surprisingly huge voter turnouts, thus causing them to almost lose the state.

Votes for PAS in Terengganu reduced by only 6.5 percent; they lost the state not because of this but by the staggeringly high voter turnout by up to 90 percent - one of the highest in the world and certainly the highest in Malaysia.

Amazingly, votes for PAS increased by 7.7 percent in Kedah parliamentary constituencies, yet they lost miserably. The delineation exercise by the Election Commission (read BN) was one of the culprits.

Abdullah also tried to project the impression that the non-Malays were really afraid of PAS. This could be true though it depends very much on the location as well as the non-Malays' exposure. In BN-controlled areas, you would find that this to be very much the case. This is not at all surprising as they have been bombarded with this 'fear culture' factor day in day out by their elected representatives and the media.

What the BN fails to mention, however, is that in the two states that PAS controlled before last Sunday, non-Malays had opened up PAS' pondok panas willingly in Kota Bharu and Kuala Terengganu. The PAS Chinese candidate for Kota Lama received an increase of almost 700 votes.

And in Baling, Kedah, the removal of 2,390 Malay voters from the constituency in favour of 4,400 Chinese voters, did not prevent the PAS candidate from increasing his votes by almost 7,000. One would expect that he should lose this amount of votes, not bank them in. Alas, he lost the seat, again, because of the amazingly high voter turnout.

The number of voters that cast their ballots there increased by almost 20,000 (84 percent) compared to 1999; the largest increase in the country. Compare this with the voter turnout of 67 percent in the BN- strongholds at Kota Darul Aman and Gurun.

The whole state of Johor, which had the highest number of new voters in the country, only saw an increase of about 40,000 voters casting their ballots on polling day. Compare this with 80,000 in Terengganu.

The main cause for PAS' loss of seats in the general election is mostly because of the shockingly high voter turnout for seats where PAS had low win majorities, as well as for those at the party's strongholds.