Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian opposition leader, took the first step on Tuesday towards his goal of trying to seize power from the long-ruling National Front government by taking a parliamentary seat in a by-election after a decade’s absence.
The solid size of his winning majority against a government and an independent candidate is likely to strengthen his effort to persuade disaffected government MPs to support him in a no-confidence vote against the administration of Abdullah Badawi by mid-September.
Mr Anwar had been tipped to win the election in the Permatang Pauh constituency, located near the port of Penang in north-west Malaysia, that had been represented by him or his wife since 1982.
He won the seat by a margin of more than 16,000 votes, compared with his wife’s last victory in general elections in March with a 13,400 vote margin, in spite of a lower voter turnout.
The former deputy prime minister had been barred from standing for political office until earlier this year after he was imprisoned in a power struggle with Mahathir Mohamad, former prime minister, in 1998.
It remains uncertain, however, when Mr Anwar will return to parliament. He has been seeking to be sworn in this week ahead of the government’s annual budget announcement on Friday. But the parliamentary speaker has suggested he would not be seated until October.
In the meantime, Mr Anwar is scheduled to appear in court next month to answer charges of sodomy with a former male aide. If convicted, he could be stripped of his parliamentary seat.
Mr Anwar has vowed to call a vote of no-confidence against the government by September 16. But there are signs of dissent within his three-party alliance, with the Islamic Party of Malaysia (Pas) seen as possibly ready to defect to the government side.
Pas has complained about being pushed aside in a power-sharing agreement with coalition partners in the five state governments that the opposition alliance won in March.
The alliance is split by ideological differences. Mr Anwar’s People’s Justice party is multi-racial, while the Democratic Action party is a secular ethnic Chinese-dominated party and Pas represents conservative Islamic elements of the country’s Muslim Malay majority.
If Mr Anwar fails to mount a successful challenge against the government by his mid-September deadline, he could suffer a loss of credibility while strengthening the odds that the government will remain in office.
Source: FT - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91b5c8dc-7366-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
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