Malaysia’s opposition figurehead Anwar Ibrahim said yesterday that he aims to return to parliament for the first time in a decade later this year if a court orders a by-election near his home town.
A high court in Kedah state will hear a challenge on Aug. 19 asking it to invalidate the result in a seat that was won by his Keadilan party in March 8 general elections.
Anwar said that if the court declares the result null and void he will contest the ensuing by-election.
“My plan is to contest in the Kulim-Bandar Baharu seat. I am optimistic of victory,” he said. “The constituency neighbors my hometown of Permatang Pauh in Penang. I am familiar with the locals there.”
A return to parliament would be the next step in the political rehabilitation of Anwar, who was sacked as deputy premier in 1998 and later jailed on sodomy and corruption charges.
The sex conviction was overturned but the corruption count barred him from public office until April.
Anwar, who was considered the heir apparent to then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad when he was fired, was expected to formally announce his plan at a party rally in the constituency later yesterday.
However, he admitted that new sodomy allegations leveled against him by a 23-year-old male former aide had put an “additional burden” on his family and his return to politics.
He said the claims were fabricated to prevent him from seizing power and showed he posed a serious threat to Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s coalition, which has ruled Malaysia for more than 50 years.
The opposition parties — Keadilan, the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) — humbled the governing Barisan Nasional coalition with unprecedented gains in the March elections.
Rallied by Anwar, the parties won more than a third of parliamentary seats and five of the 13 states in the general election, delivering Barisan Nasional its worst result since 1969.
In April, they announced a strategic alliance and Anwar said that PAS and DAP leaders had promised to mobilize their supporters for a by-election.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema