Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is expected tomorrow to unveil a new cabinet, which observers said will indicate his appetite for reform after humiliating election results.

Abdullah has defied calls to quit after the March 8 polls and is promising "new faces" in a cabinet tipped to be trimmed in size after the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition lost its two-thirds majority for the first time since 1969.

"The announcement is expected to be made on Tuesday," a spokesman from the prime minister s office told AFP.

Abdullah's previous cabinet had a whopping 32 ministers, 39 deputy ministers and 20 parliamentary secretaries, with jobs handed out to many of the 14 race-based parties that make up the coalition.

The large cabinet had been criticised as unwieldy and wasteful, and there is speculation that some ministries could be merged now that there will be just 140 Barisan Nasional lawmakers, compared to 198 in the outgoing administration.

Abdullah has said that the new line-up will reflect the coalition s racial power-sharing concept and include all the communities -- majority Muslim Malays and minority ethnic Chinese and Indians.

But observers have said he will have difficulty finding ethnic minority candidates to fill prominent posts, after the Chinese and Indian parties in the coalition were punished in the elections. The only Indian cabinet minister in the outgoing administration, Samy Vellu, lost his parliamentary seat, which he had held since 1974.

Source : PTI