Malaysia's ruling coalition is investigating claims that the opposition could seize power with the help of lawmakers who are considering defecting, reports said yesterday.
The dominant United Malays National Organization (UMNO) said it was sending teams out to check on rumored defections by members of coalition component parties who were alienated after disastrous March 8 election results.
"Some people are saying this... we will get our intelligence to check," UMNO secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said, according to the New Straits Times.
"Why should they buy our people over when we've already won?" he asked.
"They think we are weak because we lost in five states and we didn't get a two-thirds majority [in parliament]," he said.
SWITCHING SIDES
Emboldened by the results, the worst in the Barisan Nasional coalition's half century of rule over Malaysia, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has said that lawmakers have approached him about switching sides.
"I don't know how soon we can form the new government but we are moving in that direction," Anwar, a former Malaysian deputy prime minister who was forced to step down and jailed a decade ago, said earlier this week.
Anwar said that coalition lawmakers from Malaysia's eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island had been in contact with him to discuss switching sides.
The power bloc there has enough members to unseat the government if it were to change hands.
He has insisted that defectors would not be "bought" and other opposition figures have challenged the government to file a police report if they find any evidence of improper payments being made.
DENIAL
Amid reports that the first of the defectors had resigned from the coalition, the Sarawak United People's Party told state media that the stories were not true and insisted that its lawmaker Richard Riot was still a member of the party.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has dismissed Anwar's plans and downplayed any suggestions of splits within UMNO, despite a series of high-level resignations that shook up the party.
The prime minister's decision to streamline the cabinet and drop a number of veteran politicians in a new line-up announced on Monday has also alienated government lawmakers who were overlooked.
Barisan Nasional will have 140 lawmakers in the newly arranged 222-seat parliament, compared with 199 in the outgoing 219-seat parliament.
The opposition alliance won 80 seats compared with its previous number of 19.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
At first, Francis Ari Sture thought a human was trying to shove him down the steep Norwegian mountainside. Then he saw the golden eagle land. “We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture said on Monday. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.” The bird then attacked Sture five more times on Thursday last week, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old bicycle courier’s face and arms over 10 to 15 minutes as he sprinted down the mountain. The same eagle is believed to be responsible for attacks on three other people across a vast mountainous area of southern Norway
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
RSS