On the eve of Sarawak's eighth state elections, Barisan Nasional tried to buy votes by distributing cash, hampers, drums of water, food and clothes, alleged a Keadilan top leader today.

In a six-page post-mortem of the elections, the party's election campaign director Azmin Ali said that on election day, vans and cars provided by BN carried out such activities while ferrying voters to polling stations.

In Simunjan, one of the constituencies in Kuching where Keadilan contested, Azmin said a voter was detained by police for receiving the bribe.

"This culture of money politics has been blessed by BN because it wants to maintain power in the state," said Azmin.

Last Thursday, BN won by a landslide victory, sweeping 60 of the 62 seats in the state assembly. It lost Meluan to an Independent candidate and Kidurong to DAP.

Keadilan contested in 25 seats, 15 Malay-Melanau majority areas, five Iban, four Chinese and one Orang Ulu. Eleven of their candidates lost their deposits because they failed to get 1.8 percent of the votes.

BN candidates, led by long-serving chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, had repeatedly slammed the opposition for being aggressive and violent during the nine-day campaign since nomination day on Sept 18.

Azmin, in turn, criticised BN for their repeated accusations of the opposition's "aggressive style of campaigning".

BN violent

"The state elections this time around proved that it was BN who was violent," said Azmin.

He clarified that the party's candidate in Demak Laut, Ahmad Lukman Abang Ibrahim, was attacked and beaten by a group of eight youths who wore BN jackets on Wednesday night.

The incident, he said, occurred in the party's operations centre in Kg Melayu, Tabuan.

Azmin also alleged that two of the party's helpers were assaulted and slashed with a parang by the same group who later escaped in a van and white Proton Wira.

"This group was reported to be drunk when entering our operation centre. Both our helpers were hurt and one of them had six stitches," he said, adding that the party had lodged a police report over the incident.

The Hulu Kelang state assembly representative claimed that BN mobilised the Sarawak Silat Group (Malay martial arts) to create chaos in operation centres, and surrounded villages and housing estates to prevent helpers from campaigning and to frighten voters at polling stations.

He added that RELA, the state's voluntary defence service group, was stationed at BN-sponsored programme and polling stations.