KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - MALAYSIAN'S main opposition party has offered to endorse as election candidates two ethnic Indians who have been detained under internal security laws after they helped organise a mass Indian street protest.

The Democratic Action Party (DAP), gearing up for snap polls expected in the next few weeks, said on Sunday the pair were existing party members who had the right to stand for election, despite their indefinite detention as threats to state security.

'It's basically up to them. If they agree, we will nominate them,' party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said, adding that he had yet to hear back from the pair via their lawyers.

Racial tensions are expected to cost the ruling coalition votes at the next election, after more than 10,000 minority ethnic Indians took to the streets in November, accusing the government of starving them of jobs and university places.

Anti-government protests are generally outlawed in Malaysia, and police used water cannon and tear gas to break up the rally in the capital. Later, the government detained five organisers, including DAP members M. Manoharan and B. Ganabathi Rao.

There has been speculation since then that the DAP could capitalise on the dissent within the Indian community, which makes up about 7 per cent of the population, by endorsing Mr Manoharan and Mr Ganabathi, both lawyers, as candidates.

They are being held at a detention centre in northern Malaysia for those deemed security threats, but the DAP says that without being charged or convicted of any offences in a court, they remain eligible to contest elections from behind bars.

Mr Lim said there was a precedent from 1978, when the DAP nominated for re-election two lawmakers who had been detained under the same law, the colonial-era Internal Security Act.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's multi-racial coalition is considered certain to be re-elected, given the opposition is weak, the press pro-government and the electoral system weighted in favour of rural voters, who tend to support the government.

But Mr Abdullah concedes the Indian community could deliver a protest vote against the coalition, whose minority Indian partner came under heavy attack during the November protest.

'Yes, I think votes will be affected somewhat,' he said in an interview published in the Sunday Star. -- REUTERS