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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS