Back to the future

Back to the future
12 July, 2008

Anwar puts it more bluntly. "I thought, 'Not again,'" he told TIME. "But this shows how desperate the government is. The economy is in a bad state, [parliamentarians] are crossing over to our side, there's turmoil within Umno."

Time International Asia Edition

For Malaysians, it was a case of déjà vu. On June 28, opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was accused in a police report of forcing himself sexually on a 23-year-old male aide. Sodomy, even under consensual circumstances, can garner a 20-year prison sentence in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

Anwar, a married father of 6, denies the allegation, and characterises the legal action as political retribution for the opposition's breakthrough victories in the general elections in March.

Ten years ago, when Anwar was deputy prime minister and a star in Umno, the dominant political party in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, he launched a challenge against the long rule of former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. In short order, Anwar was sacked and charged with sodomy and abuse of power.

Although the sex charge was overturned in 2004, the man once presumed to become Malaysia's next prime minister languished in prison for 6 years.

Jail time didn't diminish Anwar's political fervour. In March, he helped orchestrate an electoral embarrassment of the BN by an unwieldy opposition consisting of, among others, Muslim Malays who believe Syariah law could wipe out social ills and Chinese who advocate a secular Malaysia.

But Anwar wasn't finished yet. In recent weeks he has aggressively courted parliamentary defectors from the BN and vows to form a new government by mid-September.

If he succeeds, the 60-year-old former Muslim youth leader will be the first opposition politician to ever become Malaysia's prime minister.

"With Anwar resurgent and within a whisker of the top job, there are uncanny similarities between the 1998 [political] crisis and the current one," says Wong Chin Huat, a political scientist at Monash University's Kuala Lumpur campus.

Anwar puts it more bluntly. "I thought, 'Not again,'" he told TIME. "But this shows how desperate the government is. The economy is in a bad state, [parliamentarians] are crossing over to our side, there's turmoil within Umno."

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi says there is no link between the sodomy investigation and Anwar's political comeback. But there's no question Abdullah's government is increasingly under fire.

In recent weeks, cuts in fuel subsidies have sent usually quiescent Malaysians to the streets in protest. More citizens are criticising the government's race-based affirmative-action system, which gives Malays privileges in everything from university places to government contracts. (Anwar has promised to reform the system should he come to power.)

The ruling alliance has lost its usual cohesion. At one point in mid-June the Sabah Progressive Party, a tiny coalition member, even called for a parliamentary vote of no confidence against the Prime Minister. Abdullah, who is being blamed for the governing alliance's electoral drubbing, is under so much pressure to resign that he promised last month to eventually hand over the reins to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

For his part, Anwar has come out swinging. On June 30 he filed a defamation suit against his accuser. "For the general Malaysian public, especially Muslims, this is the worst charge they could come up with to soil my character," says Anwar.

"But I don't think the public will be so gullible to believe this accusation. I've had senior politicians tell me that people are angry, that the government has lost all credibility by doing this."

That's certainly what Anwar's supporters believe, including office worker Hanifah Majid, who showed her solidarity by bringing her sleeping children with her to the lobby of a hotel where Anwar was strategising his defence well past midnight.

Still, it's not yet clear how parliamentarians who were tempted to join the opposition will react to the sodomy accusation.

Already, Anwar has indefinitely delayed plans to publicly introduce BN lawmakers whom he says have defected to his camp. Malaysians may have just experienced déjà vu, but few are willing to predict what happens next.