Resurgent Anwar in tilt to lead Malaysia
ABOUT 10,000 people were expected to attend celebrations in Kuala Lumpur to mark the expiry of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's ban from public office, a decade after he was sacked as Malaysia's deputy prime minister.
Political gatherings are strictly controlled in Malaysia, and police are reported to have threatened to cordon off the private club where the event was to be held yesterday to prevent it from going ahead.
"We have not issued any permits for the gathering. I advise all the supporters not to attend it. The gathering is banned," city police chief Muhammad Sabtu Osman said yesterday.
When he emerged from prison four years ago, Mr Anwar was a weakened and gaunt figure, all but written off by the Malaysian political elite.
But Mr Anwar, resurgent and confident after leading opposition parties to their strongest gains in a half-century, planned to celebrate his political rehabilitation in front of a crowd expected to be in the thousands.
A ban on Mr Anwar holding political office, imposed by the judge who in 1999 sentenced him to six years in prison for abuse of power, expired yesterday, allowing Mr Anwar to pursue the job he has coveted for at least a decade: prime minister.
"There's no rush," Mr Anwar said in a recent interview in his office in a suburban house outside Kuala Lumpur. "I don't need to be prime minister tomorrow."
Yet he and his allies have not dawdled since capturing five of the most populous and wealthy of Malaysia's 13 states in the March 8 elections. The Governing coalition won an uncomfortably slim 51% of the vote, and Mr Anwar said he was wooing possible defectors.
He needs only 30 members of parliament to cross over to bring down the federal Government. He also recently forged a pact among the three main opposition groups, called the People's Alliance, to govern the states they control jointly.
The opposition's gains have thrown the United Malays National Organisation, which has governed Malaysia since independence in 1957, into disarray.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, fighting for his political life, said on Friday: "I will not remain for very long."
Mr Abdullah is being challenged within the party by Razaleigh Hamzah, a prince from Kelantan, a northern state, and a former finance minister.
Prince Razaleigh and Mr Anwar offer starkly different visions for Malaysia. For the first time in decades, voters in multi-ethnic Malaysia are faced with a fundamental ideological choice of whether to continue with an authoritarian system largely segregated by race that has dominated politics here for decades, or to experiment with a more liberal democracy that treats ethnicity as secondary.
Prince Razaleigh, 71, has couched his bid in the traditional language of Malay nationalism, appealing to the largest of the country's three main ethnic groups. "We successfully vanquished the scheming coloniser and continued our struggle to claim independence armed only with a devoted spirit toward our race, religion, culture and homeland," he said in his recent speech when announcing his challenge to Mr Abdullah.
Mr Anwar, by contrast, promises profound changes to the country's authoritarian laws and political system of ethnic segregation, in which each main ethnic group — Malay, Chinese and Indian — has traditionally had its own political party.
His multi-ethnic partners have vowed to abolish a system that gives ethnic Malays discounts on houses, scholarships and a quota of 30% of shares in companies listed on the stockmarket.
NEW YORK TIMES, AFP
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