Malaysia’s opposition declared its leader Anwar Ibrahim had won a “landslide” victory yesterday in a by-election to return him to parliament after a decade-long absence.
Anwar, who has made a stunning comeback after being sacked as deputy prime minister and jailed on sodomy and corruption charges, said he was now on track to seize power from a weakened government.
“We declare victory, the margin is very huge,” said Tian Chua, information chief of Anwar’s Keadilan party which leads a three-member opposition alliance.
“I think it’s a landslide victory,” he said.
Chua said that with half of the vote counted, Anwar had garnered at least 65 percent of the ballots and that the figure could rise as high as 70 percent once all the 38,144 votes cast were tallied.
Early results from the official count showed Anwar had won 12,748 votes, against 5,380 for his opponent from the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has dominated Malaysian politics for half a century.
Anwar said he had outgunned the government despite a “sickening” campaign that focused on new sodomy allegations against him, and was marred by allegations of vote-buying and electoral fraud.
The opposition has also accused the coalition of attempting to undermine Anwar by stoking tensions between Muslim Malays who dominate the population and minority ethnic Chinese and Indian citizens.
“This is a clear indication that people of all races have rejected the communal politics of Barisan Nasional. It is a clear endorsement of our reform agenda. We are on track to take over the government,” he said.
Anwar had been widely expected to win back his old seat of Permatang Pauh, which was held by his wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail during his political exile. She won re-election in March but stood aside last month to allow him to contest, after a ban on holding public office expired.
However, political pundits had said that the coalition’s no-holds-barred campaign could have had an impact on his winning margin, which will be seen as an indicator of his ability to shrug off the sodomy charges.
Analysts said that even after he returns to parliament as the formal leader of a three-member opposition alliance, Anwar faces further daunting hurdles, including a looming trial on the new sodomy allegations.
The opposition leader has said that the charges, leveled by a 23-year-old male aide, were concocted by the government to thwart his ambitions of seizing power with the help of defecting lawmakers.
The ballot in Permatang Pauh was held under tight security, after both sides traded allegations of abuse and attacks on their supporters. Some 4,500 police were deployed to keep the peace.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS