Its chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the coalition had been contacted by the Palace, which said it would recognise the results pending an official announcement from the Election Commission (EC).

He said that Thursday and Friday (May 10 and 11) would be declared public holidays, to be announced by the Chief-Secretary to the Government.

“We can’t declare public holidays because we are not the government yet,” he said at a press conference at 2.45am on Thursday (May 10).

“The palace has contacted us, because they heard that we have achieved a majority.

“After the Prime Minister is sworn in and appointed Prime Minister officially, he may appoint the Deputy Prime Minister and other ministers.

In a stunning political upset that took pundits by surprise, Mahathir’s opposition alliance ended the long hold on power of the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has been in power in Malaysia since its birth as an independent country in 1957.

The thumping victory capped a dramatic political comeback for Mahathir, who previously ruled the country with an iron fist for 22 years and came out of retirement to take on Prime Minister Najib Razak after the leader became embroiled in a massive corruption scandal.

When he takes power, Mahathir will be the oldest prime minister in the world.

Despite the shock result there were no reports of trouble on the streets, where pockets of celebration erupted overnight.

A flag-waving crowd of supporters gathered on a field outside the headquarters of Mahathir’s party near Kuala Lumpur.

Suva Selvan, a 48-year-old doctor, said he felt the country had just won its independence.

“I feel that with this change we probably can see something better in the future… our hope for the future is a better government, fair, free and united,” he told AFP.

Defeat could just be the beginning of Najib’s troubles. Mahathir has vowed to bring him to justice over allegations that billions of dollars were looted from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, which the scandal-hit leader set up and oversaw.

But at a press conference after his win, Mahathir vowed: “We are not seeking revenge. We want to restore the rule of law.”

He said he would be sworn in Thursday.

Mahathir’s return to the political frontlines saw him throw in his lot with an opposition alliance filled with parties that he crushed while in power, and which includes jailed opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim — his former nemesis.

Anwar is due to be released from prison in June. Mahathir has vowed to get him a royal pardon, and later hand over the premiership to him.

As well as seizing control of the national government, several state legislatures across the country fell into opposition hands for the first time, including the highly symbolic bastion of Johor, the birthplace of Najib’s party that was the lynchpin of the ruling coalition.

Dramatic defeat

Official results from the Election Commission showed that Mahathir’s opposition grouping Pakatan Harapan, along with a small ally, had secured 121 parliamentary seats. 112 are needed to form a government.

BN got 79 seats — a dramatic drop from the 133 they held previously.

Najib was nowhere to be seen as the evening wore on, and was believed to have holed up inside his house for talks with senior members of BN.

The opposition win was particularly striking as critics said that Najib tried everything he could to cling to power.

His government was accused of pushing a redrawing of electoral boundaries through parliament that created constituencies packed with the country’s Muslim Malay majority, who have traditionally supported BN.

He called the election on a weekday — polls are typically held at the weekend in Malaysia — in what observers said was an effort to keep turnout down, which would hurt the opposition. In the event, voters flocked to the polls in huge numbers.

Ultimately the explosive allegations of corruption, coupled with anger at rising living costs, proved too much for Malaysia’s 15 million voters, already sick of racially divisive politics in the multi-ethnic country and graft scandals under years of BN rule.

In Mahathir, the opposition found the perfect person to take on Najib. He is a staunch Malay nationalist who could appeal to the country’s biggest ethnic group, and whose years in power were remembered as a prosperous period in the country’s history.

The initial euphoria at the opposition victory will likely give way to some apprehension.

Mahathir was also a accused of being an authoritarian leader, and political opponents were thrown in jail during his time in office.

In the agreement, TVS will supply the three-wheeled vehicles to CamGO using local firm Three Wheel Motor Service Provider as an intermediary.

Ouk Chipsourn, CEO of Camgo, said at the press conference on Tuesday that his company has offered their service in Cambodia since 2016 and up to now their app has been downloaded by 5,000 users in Phnom Penh.

While there are 42 TVS King autorickshaws available for service in Phnom Penh at current time, Chipsourn said 42 others will be arriving early next month, expanding the fleet to 84.

“With the agreement today, we expect that there will be 300 TVS tuk-tuks available for operation before the end of this year,” he said, adding that the service will expand beyond Phnom Penh to other tourism destination like Siem Reap, Kampot, Preah Sihanouk provinces.

While no dollar figures were given on the deal, CamGo owns all of its tuk-tuks and offers its drivers the option to either work for a fixed salary or rent their vehicles for $4.5 a day.

Growing trend

Mobile taxi-hailing apps have been expanding quickly in Cambodia this year.

Last December, Malaysian technology company Grab entered Cambodia’s ride-hailing market and later acquired US-headquartered giant Uber. Additionally, there are also several locally operated companies.

Va Chandore, director of Three Wheel Motor Service Provider, said yesterday that demand for ride-hailing services are increasing at a breakneck pace in Cambodia. Thus, the added supply of vehicles will help to reduce traffic congestion and bring jobs into the country.

The country has pledged more than Aus$1.3 billion (US$970 million) — its largest ever aid commitment to the Pacific — to fund projects including an undersea communications cable to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The government said the reorientation of its aid priorities, revealed in a budget on Tuesday, reflected “the fundamental importance to Australia of the stability and economic progress of Pacific island countries”.

Canberra and other regional capitals have become increasingly alarmed at China’s push into the Pacific which could potentially upset the strategic balance in the region.

Australia’s Lowy Institute estimates China provided US$1.78 billion in aid, including concessional loans, to Pacific nations between 2006-16.

And reports last month — which were denied — said Beijing wanted to establish a permanent military base in Vanuatu.

The extra Aus$200 million in aid, which will also go towards a new High Commission in Tuvalu, means the Pacific now represents some 30 percent of Canberra’s total aid budget, which stood still at Aus$4.2 billion.

Aid agencies were quick to criticise the freeze in overall aid funding, at just 0.23 percent of national income despite a significant boost to government revenues from a pick-up in commodity prices and employment growth.

“This budget was an opportunity to show leadership and use some of the unexpected revenue to repair past damage to aid,” said Marc Purcell, chief executive of the Australian Council for International Development.

In contrast, neighbour New Zealand this week announced a significant rise to foreign aid, delivering Aus$668 million in extra funding over the next four years, largely directed at the Pacific.

Army Private Aung Kyaw Naing and villager Aung Than Htay were arrested at a checkpoint in Rakhine’s Rathedaung township on May 7 with nearly 200,000 meth tablets, according to a Facebook post from the government’s Information Committee.

Police then searched the home of the villager’s mother and found eight massive bags of stimulants on the top floor, amounting to a total of 1.7 pills worth $3.6 million, the statement said.

The three have been detained at a police station where they will face legal action.

“We were able to make the seizure in the village based on follow-up information from the first arrest,” an anti-drug officer told AFP, confirming the case but requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The pills were branded with the letters “WY” — the stamp of the ethnic Wa drug gangs that churn meth and heroin out of Myanmar’s lawless northeast.

The drugs are smuggled from that “Golden Triangle” zone south to Thailand and beyond, but a westward route to Bangladesh — the gateway to other South Asian markets — has also flourished.

The trade has continued to flow through Rakhine despite the heavy security presence in place since the military unleashed its ruthless crackdown on the Rohingya community last August.

More than 700,000 of the Muslim minority have fled the violence for neighbouring Bangladesh.

The UN says the campaign amounts to ethnic cleansing, but Myanmar says it was targeting Rohingya militants.

They are part of the country’s 14,940,624 registered voters who are eligible to cast their ballots in this general election.

Of that number, 278,590 are advance voters who cast their ballots last Saturday.

Advance voters comprise qualified military, police and General Operations Force personnel as well as their spouses.

Gen Y voters, or those aged below 40, comprise 40.94% of the electorate and are the biggest age group among the voters.

Finishing touches: EC staff making final preparations at a polling station at Stadium Titiwangsa in Kuala Lumpur.

Women also outnumber men, making up 50.58% of the 14.9 million voters.

A total of 2,333 candidates will be contesting 222 parliamentary seats and 505 state seats.

The Election Commission (EC) has said that it expects to announce the results from 8pm.

A simple majority of 112 parliamentary seats will be needed to form the Federal Government.

The EC will upload real-time results and all other announcements on its websites www.spr.gov.my and pru14.spr.gov.my and via its app MySPR Semak.

Pompeo was dispatched on an unannounced visit — his second in weeks, but first as secretary of state — to lay the groundwork for Donald Trump’s unprecedented meeting with Kim Jong Un.

His visit also comes as rumours fly over the fate of three US citizens being held in the North, with suggestions they may have been moved in preparation for a release.

Previous detainees have been set free into the care of high profile US visitors.

Pompeo’s itinerary — including who he would meet in Pyongyang — was not clear.

Trump, who had repeatedly threatened to attack North Korea, now appears focussed on diplomacy.

“We think relationships are building with North Korea. We will see how it all works out. Maybe it won’t. But it can be a great thing for North Korea, South Korea and the entire world,” Trump said in a televised address from the White House.

After years of tensions and ever-tightening sanctions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes, a detente on the peninsula has rapidly gathered pace.

On Tuesday, Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping in China — the second time in six weeks — highlighting efforts by the Cold War-era allies to mend frayed ties.

Beijing is keen to avoid being left out in the cold in the diplomatic manoeuvres that led to Kim’s historic summit last month with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his expected meeting with Trump.

Pompeo’s visit also comes as a tripartite meeting of East Asia’s major powers takes place in Tokyo, with Japan, South Korea and China groping for a lowest-common-denominator agreement on recent events.

Japan, which has by far the most hardline position of the North’s neighbours, has been left watching from the sidelines, uneasy at the pace of events and at what it sees as an unwarranted softening towards an untrustworthy Pyongyang.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to push for continued pressure on Pyongyang, including for “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation”, Japanese media have reported.

Moon, however, is expected to bat away such demands.

An official in his office last week said Seoul wanted the three countries to simply endorse the Panmunjon Declaration signed by Kim and Moon last month in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.

The three-decade veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations is facing opposition over her role at a secret CIA prison in Thailand in 2002 where Al-Qaeda detainees were waterboarded.

“I understand that what many people around the country want to know about are my views on CIA’s former detention and interrogation program,” she will say, according to prepared testimony for her hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I have views on this issue, and I want to be clear.

“Having served in that tumultuous time, I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly and without reservation, that under my leadership, CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation program.”

Haspel, who if approved would become the first woman to lead the premier US spy agency, is facing tough questioning over her involvement in the torture of Al-Qaeda detainees in her confirmation hearing before the powerful Senate panel.

Critics from rights groups, a significant number of retired general and admirals, and some from the intelligence community, have opposed the nomination over her ties to the secret detention and interrogation program that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Under the program, major Al-Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed all went underwent brutal treatment, including waterboarding.

Former CIA officials say Haspel was present when Nashiri was tortured at the CIA’s Bangkok “black site” in 2002.

According to her prepared testimony, released by the CIA, Haspel will commit herself to firm oversight by Congress, which in the early days of the torture program was not informed despite questions over its legality.

“Experience has taught us that CIA cannot be effective without the people’s trust,” the prepared remarks read.

“And we cannot hope to earn that trust without the accountability that comes with Congressional oversight. If we can’t share aspects of our secret work with the public, we should do so with their elected representatives.”

A group of 19 refugees in five households left the Ban Mai Nai Soi camp in Mae Hong Son province voluntarily, according to Thai officials who saw them off yesterday.

The refugees were sent across the border via the trading checkpoint at Ban Huai Ton Nun in Khun Yuam district. They followed an initial group of 71 refugees repatriated in October 2016 and 73 others sent home via Tak on Monday.

Myanmar officials led by Colonel Myint Wai, Kayah state’s Minister of Security and Border Affairs, welcomed them back in a ceremony attended by Natapanu Nopakun of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Department of International Organisations and representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp now holds about 8,000 people, down from a peak of more than 20,000. Many have found homes in third countries, while others returned to Myanmar. A source at the camp said the latest group of 19 people initially numbered 29, but the others changed their mind following a report of Myanmar government troops being deployed to Kayah in mid-April.

The source claimed the same infantry battalion had pursued the Karenni National Progressive Army in 2005, resulting in clashes just west Mae Hong Son.

Meanwhile the group of 73 refugees from 23 households crossed the border at Ban Rim Moei in Mae Sot district in Tak on Monday following a ceremony presided over by Third Army Region deputy chief Major General Supachoke Thawatpeerachai. The 73 came from camps in Tha Song Yang, Phop Phra and Umphang districts in Tak and another camp in neighbouring Kanchanaburi.

They were driven across the border in vans to be greeted in Myawaddy by Kayin state Chief Minister Nann Khin Htway Myint and other senior officials. Myanmar Ambassador Myo Myint Than witnessed the event and thanked the Thai government and agencies involved, including the UNHRC and non-governmental organisations, for taking care of the refugees.

Although it has never signed the 1951 UN Refugee convention, Thailand has sheltered more than 100,000 refugees in camps in four border provinces. Thailand and Myanmar reached a deal to repatriate them after some armed ethnic groups signed a National Ceasefire Agreement with the government in Nay Pyi Taw in 2015.

Refugees still in Thailand have begun making plans for their return, in the hope that peace and stability will prevail in their places of origin in southeastern Myanmar, according to a UNHCR statement.

The UN Refugee agency says conditions in southeastern Myanmar are enabling facilitation of voluntary return of more refugees from Thailand.

Conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, however, are not yet conducive for the return of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, the UNHCR adds. Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in November to send back some of the 700,000 Rohinghya who fled a violent crackdown last year.