Malaysia’s opposition Islamist party quashed the ruling government’s hopes of forming a pact, opting instead to consolidate a “government-in-waiting” under the leadership of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
Pan Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) leaders said at an annual assembly they would turn down the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party’s offer of a unity government that would have stymied Anwar’s hopes of wresting power in polls due by 2013.
PAS and UMNO held surprise talks last year over Islam and Malay unity, creating concern in opposition circles.
UMNO, the dominant party in the ruling National Front coalition that has ruled this Southeast Asian country for 51 years, is still struggling to recover from historic defeats in general elections last year.
Both PAS and UMNO are the only two parties able to deliver the crucial vote from majority Malay Muslims who make up more than half of the country’s 27 million population and whose support will be needed to form a stable government.
“The party leadership never had any intention to join UMNO or the National Front ... we will instead strengthen and consolidate the People’s Alliance,” PAS deputy president Nasharudin Mat Isa said late on Wednesday to cheers when opening the party’s youth wing meeting at the nation’s capital.
The People’s Alliance is a coalition of opposition parties led by Anwar.
“As far as this assembly is concerned, we are preparing for the next general election. The message that we must now consider ourselves a government-in-waiting is very clear,” he told reporters later.
PAS staying with three-party People’s Alliance will be a blow to the National Front and new Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has to turn around the ruling coalition and grapple with an impending recession that may see the economy shrink as much as 5 percent this year.
Najib’s father, Malaysia’s second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein, roped in the Islamists into the ruling National Front coalition in 1974. The marriage was short-lived with PAS pulling out acrimoniously four years later.
The cooperation issue is a controversial topic for PAS’ assembly as well as its internal party elections this year.
Nasharudin is being challenged by the party vice president Husam Musa, who leads a reform group bitterly opposed to cooperating with UMNO.
A cleric, Nasharudin enjoys the backing of the party’s conservatives and was among the PAS leaders who led talks with the government after the 2008 polls to jointly govern the economic powerhouse state of Selangor and northwestern Perak.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion