From The Age
MALAYSIAN opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in yesterday in parliament, ending a decade-long political exile and taking another step towards his plan of toppling the Government.
Mr Anwar claimed a landslide victory this week in a byelection, capping a stunning comeback after he was sacked as deputy premier in 1998 and jailed for sodomy and corruption.
“I’m glad to be back after a decade,” Mr Anwar said, attacking Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who has come under growing pressure to quit since March elections in which the opposition gained unprecedented ground.
“The Prime Minister has lost the mandate of the country and the nation,” Mr Anwar said, calling on Mr Abdullah, his deputy, Najib Razak, and “all their cronies” to be removed from power.
Asked if he was on track to carry out his plan to secure enough government defectors to oust the ruling coalition by September 16, he said yes.
Mr Anwar arrived at parliament with his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who held his seat in northern Penang state during his exile, and daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar, also an MP.
Lim Kit Siang, from the Democracy Action Party, which is a member of Mr Anwar’s three-member opposition alliance, greeted him from the parliamentary benches, adding: “The Government is like the Titanic which is going to sink.”
Mr Anwar needs to persuade 30 government MPs to defect in order to form a government, a task political observers say will be difficult but not impossible.
He faces another daunting hurdle with new sodomy allegations, levelled by a 23-year-old former aide, which he says the Government has concocted to sideline him. AFP
Is Anwar Ibrahim the world’s greatest Malay?
Tuesday, September 02, 2008 6:44 PM
Despite the years of incarceration while suffering a bad back burdened with the knowledge that his reputation tarnished with allegations of sexual misconduct and worse betrayed by his Malay brethren who unceremoniously threw him out of the most powerful political party in Malaysia.
After some of the most tumultuous events in the history of Malaysia, were you Anwar, would you not be optimistic that the future of Malaysian politics now belongs to you? From the role confined largely to the fringe of real power, Anwar has experienced a transformation in fortunes best described in Hans Christian Andersen’s Ugly Duckling.
But that is not the issue here, but how do you retain respect or affection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to systematically annihilate the reputation of our most famous Malay in the world history .
Unless our leaders overnight transform themselves into paragons of candour and truth, there is no choice but witness the destruction of Malaysia ’s most well known icon in the world.
The question is do we Malaysians understand that ‘when one erects a throne to lies, one erects a gallows to truth.”