Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s party yesterday announced a mass rally against a government crackdown that he says is aimed at preventing him from seizing power within days.
Anwar said on Saturday that he has enough support to pull off a parliamentary coup, but that the takeover slated for tomorrow could be delayed by the series of arrests under tough internal security laws.
“The priority is political stability. It’s not an issue of deferring, we have the numbers to move,” he said, adding he was “mindful” that he too could be targeted with arrest.
Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was sacked and jailed a decade ago, needs 30 lawmakers to defect if he is to topple the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has ruled since independence from Britain half a century ago.
That prospect would have been unthinkable before the March general elections, when his opposition alliance shocked the nation by denying the government its two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time.
Since then the coalition has been in disarray, and the arrests on Friday of an opposition politician, a prominent blogger and a journalist raised fears of a widespread campaign against dissent.
“Instead of pursuing a reform agenda it has chosen to burn the country to save itself and to maintain its odious grip on power,” Anwar said.
The three arrested have been accused of inciting ethnic tensions in the multicultural country, but Anwar accused the government of stirring up a phony racial crisis in order to deflect attention from its own problems.
“We ask the government how far it is willing to go to usurp justice and destroy the institutions of good governance in its attempt to drive the Malaysian people against each other,” he said.
The opposition alliance said it expected some 30,000 supporters to gather for the rally at a suburban stadium tonight to call for the release of the two still detained, after the journalist was freed on Saturday.
It will be held on the eve of Sept. 16, Anwar’s deadline to seize power and also the day in 1963 when the Borneo island states of Sabah and Sarawak joined together with Malaya to form modern Malaysia.
“We gained independence but Malaysians continue to live under repression. We believe Malaysia Day should symbolize freedom, justice and equality,” said Tian Chua, information chief of Anwar’s Keadilan party.
“The gathering at Kelana Jaya stadium is to express our solidarity for the two people held under the draconian security law and to demand their freedom,” he said.
Rights groups have condemned the use of the Internal Security Act (ISA), which allows for indefinite detention without trial, and the US summoned Malaysia’s top envoy in Washington in protest over the arrests.
Opposition lawmaker Teresa Kok, from the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party, which is a member of the opposition alliance, was arrested over allegations she complained about the noise of morning prayers at a mosque. She has said the accusation is “preposterous.”
The other detainee is Malaysia’s leading blogger, 58-year-old Raja Petra Kamaruddin, who has repeatedly targeted government figures on his Web site “Malaysia Today.”
He has already been charged with sedition and defamation after linking Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife to the sensational murder of a Mongolian woman.
Police quickly released Tan Hoon Cheng from the Chinese-language Sin Chew Daily News who had reported on an outburst from a ruling party member who called ethnic Chinese “squatters.”
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
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of