With a reformist program, this moderate Muslim politician comes to power after a long career marked by accusations of homosexuality that he has always denied
After five days of blockade and countless negotiations since Saturday’s elections, veteran politician Anwar Ibrahim has been named Malaysia’s new prime minister on Thursday. For him, a tense wait of not only five days, but twenty-five years has come to an end, the ones he has been waiting to finally seize power in this Southeast Asian country.
The broad coalition led by his party, Pakatan Harapan (PH), won the early elections with 82 deputies, but fell short of the 112 needed to achieve a majority in the Malaysian Parliament. With 73 seats, it was on the heels of the ruling coalition, Perikatan Nasional (PN), which for a few days tossed around the possibility of reaching agreements with other parties to remain in power.
As if it were heads or tails, the coin could have gone either way when the King of Malaysia, Sultan Abdullah, proposed a unity government to end the ‘impasse’. But Muyhiddin Yassin, Anwar’s rival, rejected the monarch’s proposal, a move that played against him and sealed his fate.
With other important support and the backing of the king, who consulted with the other sultans of the rotating Malaysian monarchy, Anwar Ibrahim has finally been sworn in as prime minister for the sake of the country’s stability. “It is important that our nation free itself from political instability when the country needs a strong and stable government to improve the economy,” the sovereign justified in a statement.
For Anwar Ibrahim, 75, this concludes a path that has lasted a quarter of a century, and begins another full of challenges. Considered one of the most brilliant and charismatic politicians in Southeast Asia, he began by founding an Islamic movement in his youth and in 1982 joined the party that had held power in Malaysia since its independence from the British in 1957: the National Organization for Unity. Malaya (UNMO) leading the National Front (Barisan Nasional) coalition.
Thanks to his oratorical and management skills, he rose rapidly in that formation until in 1993 he became Deputy Prime Minister and Head of Economy of the Executive led by the veteran Mahathir Mohamad, who anointed him as his successor.
But their differences over how to deal with the 1997 Asian financial crisis cracked their union, and in 1998 Mahathir ousted Anwar for corruption and abuse of power amid strong citizen protests.
political revenge
In an accusation that he always defined as political revenge, Anwar fell out of favor when one of his aides denounced that he had raped him and ended up in prison for sodomy, a crime in Muslim Malaysia. Although the sentence was annulled in 2004, another of his aides denounced him again for the same thing in 2008, when he was leading the opposition and threatening the hegemony of the ruling coalition.
Due to lack of evidence, the judge acquitted him in 2012, but the Court of Appeals reopened the case in March 2014. In 2015, he was again sentenced to five years for sodomy, a sentence that advocacy groups attributed to his increasingly better results. elections, which threatened the government.
In two interviews granted when he was released, one in 2010 and the other in 2014, he always denied the charges. “It’s just a government strategy so that I can’t stand in the elections,” explained Anwar, who advocates a reform of the laws to move towards a more moderate and modern Islam in Malaysia.
In 2018, and while he was still in jail, his party won the elections in a new coalition formed with his mentor and later enemy, Mahathir Mohamad. Despite their rivalry in the past, the two teamed up to oust the ruling party from power over the monumental corruption scandal involving the state investment fund 1MBD, from which 4 billion euros disappeared and for which Prime Minister Najib Razak was convicted. to twelve years in prison in 2020.
After the electoral victory, the king of Malaysia granted a pardon to Anwar, who joined Mahathir in the government with the promise that he would relieve him after two years because he was already a nonagenarian. But that coalition fell apart again due to several political defections before the succession arrived, and Anwar was back in opposition in May 2020.
Two and a half years later, and after a long wait of a quarter of a century and two imprisonments, he finally fulfilled his political destiny and became Prime Minister of Malaysia.
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