Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim spent the last weekend before the May 5 general election in the country's easternmost state of Sabah in an effort to crack the traditional ticket bunkers of the ruling coalition.

Anwar visited several parliament and state constituencies where his opposition Pakatan Rakyat, or People's Alliance, is expected to make a gain in the upcoming election.

He was scheduled to visit the east coast of Sabah on Sunday, which was haunted by a incursion of Sulu gunmen from Southern Philippines recently.

Incumbent Prime Minister Najib Razak was in Sarawak on Saturday, the other state on North Borneo, to consolidate support there for his ruling Barisan Nasional.

Joining Malaysia in 1963, the two states are among the least- developed in the country despite their rich natural resources.

With their population making up less than a quarter of Malaysia's total of 28 million, Sabah and Sarawak contributed more than one-third of the total 140 parliament seats won by Barisan in the last election in 2008, when it suffered its worst setback in decades by losing the two-third majority in parliament.

The opposition won only one parliament seat and one state legislature seat in 2008 in Sabah.

Anwar and other opposition leaders are trying hard to make a change this time, promising higher oil and gas royalty rights, ownership of oil companies for the resource-rich states, while finding ammunition in the scandals related to the two chief ministers of Sabah and Sarawak.

Senior opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said the opposition needed to win an additional of around 30 seats from Barisan's three strongholds --Sabah, Sarawak and Johor that borders Singapore, to secure a simple majority in the 222 seats lower house of parliament, to achieve the first regime change since the country obtained its independence in 1957.

Sources said the opposition is gaining ground in Sabah as Chinese voters swing to the opposition in large numbers, but it is still hard for the opposition to win enough seats there to support a victory in the general election.

For Anwar, that will be the difference between becoming a college professor and Malaysia's seventh prime minister.

As a former senior leader of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) which dominates the ruling coalition, Anwar was widely seen as the apparent successor to Malaysia's longest serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad when he was appointed as deputy prime minister in the 1990s.

However, he fell out with his mentor in a series of issues including how to handle the 1997 financial crisis. He was then sacked and put in jail for corruption and sodomy charges.

The charismatic leaders joined the opposition later, successfully brought the long-scrambled opposition to a major breakthrough in 2008.

He has a slight edge over Najib as a candidate for premiership according to the latest poll by the Democratic and Election Center of University of Malaya.

Although the poll shows both sides heading neck-to-neck in the closest election in the country, opposition still have an uphill battle against an electoral system that favors the incumbent.

The 65-year-old Anwar said he would retreat to the back seat and try to get a teaching job abroad if the opposition lost in the upcoming election.