A MANDARIN-SPEAKING former farm boy was chosen by the Australians to become their new prime minister Saturday.

Labor Party candidate Kevin Rudd swept to power in a landslide victory over Liberal incumbent John Howard, the second-longest serving prime minister in Australian history.

Rudd won despite his relative political inexperience and a strong economy. Many voters were fed up on a host of domestic issues that had dogged the incumbent.

At 50, the blond and boyish Rudd is 18 years Howard’s junior, and voters quickly warmed to him. Polls showed him leading the incumbent for months before election day, but the results exceeded expectations.

Labor needed to win 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament to wrest control of the government. Initial results indicated that the party had won at least 84.

Rudd has promised to withdraw Australia’s 550 combat troops from Iraq and sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Rudd has transformed the fate of the Australian Labor Party after taking over its stewardship less than a year ago, becoming the most popular opposition leader in 30 years.

The victory was a moment of great personal triumph for Rudd. The youngest of four children, he grew up poor on a Queensland dairy farm and was raised by his widowed mother, a nurse who was once evicted and forced to sleep in her car with her children. Rudd, who lost his father in a car accident when he was 11 and his mother a few years ago, referred to his parents in his victory remarks.

Fiercely bright and a star pupil despite his disrupted schooling, Rudd enrolled at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1976.

The opening up of China had convinced him that he should learn Mandarin and study Asian politics. He graduated with first-class honors. Recruited by the Australian foreign service, he was sent first to Stockholm and then Beijing, a posting he loved.

He came to national prominence as Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman before winning the leadership last December. (SD-Agencies)