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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim is on the
attack after returning to the political stage, launching a series of
broadsides against the ruling party which he says is “rotten to
the core.”
Anwar was a celebrated deputy
premier and heir-apparent to former leader Mahathir Mohamad until
1998, when he suffered a spectacular fall from grace, facing sodomy
and corruption charges that landed him in jail for six years.
He was freed in September 2004,
but until in April led a nomadic existence with stints lecturing in
Britain, the US and Australia, and only in recent months has
switched his focus back to the political scene.
“Like any established,
long-serving, ruling party they tend to rot,” he said of the
ruling United Malays National Organization of which he was once a
leading light, serving as a talented finance minister with strong
Islamic credentials.
“They lose their ideas and
massive corruption, lethargy and indolence are creeping in. They are
all signs of a major disease,” he said in an interview with AFP.
“They are rotten to the core.”
Anwar’s sodomy conviction has
been overturned but the corruption conviction still stands, barring
him from standing for public office until April 2008.
National elections must be held
by early 2009, but there is speculation that Prime Minister Abdullah
Ahmad Badawi, who replaced Mahathir three years ago, will go to the
people before that, effectively preventing Anwar from taking part.
In the meantime his party, “Keadilan”—or
the People’s Justice Party—is formally run by his wife and its
only sitting parliamentary member, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.
Anwar has been lobbing blistering
attacks on the government, mostly centered on the corruption which
has calcified UMNO over its five decades in power and which Abdullah
has been criticized for failing to address.
In press conferences at his
sprawling home, he has called for a probe into the high-profile
murder of a Mongolian model to determine whether the well-connected
political analyst accused of organizing the crime used government
connections to do so.
He has also demanded the
government investigate a $900-billion Russian fighter jet deal,
which he said was “blatantly corrupt” and for which a former
cabinet minister received a massive commission.
However, the hard-hitting
accusations receive little airtime in Malaysia, where the tightly
controlled media rarely publish any of his pronouncements—just one
of the problems he faces as he tries to reestablish his political
relevance.
Political analyst Khoo Kay Peng
says Keadilan has the potential to be an effective opposition,
particularly after its coalition with the fundamentalist Islamic
party PAS, but Anwar has a lot of work to do.
“If he’s making a political
comeback he needs to show a lot more commitment. He hasn’t made
many clear positions, he wasn’t even here [in Malaysia] until a
few months ago,” he said.
“People remember his past
associations, he hasn’t created a new political identity. Anwar
‘the opposition leader’ is not established in the people’s
minds yet.”
Anwar is keeping up a frantic
schedule of public speaking engagements and rally appearances where
he airs his charges of high-level corruption within the judiciary,
the media and the electoral system.
“You try to talk about the
murder and corruption and they pretend not to hear. [They behave]
with impunity, bribing people, having lavish entertainment and
having total control of the machine,” he said.
But when the talk turns to his
intentions and political plans, he is somewhat coy, even with
regards to his role within his own party.
“I’m not going to be
presumptuous, I’ve been asked to be more involved, but I’m not
yet a candidate,” he said.
--AFP
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