Veteran opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim has been sworn in as Malaysia’s prime minister.
This follows days of post-election deadlock which was resolved by the country’s King after intense negotiations with other parties for a coalition government, the shape of which is yet to be unveiled.
Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) party, won the biggest share of seats in Saturday’s election, but did not have enough on its own to form a government.
75-year-old Ibrahim came to prominence as a university student leader who founded the Islamic youth movement, ABIM.
When he joined the then-ruling United Malays National Organisation, UMNO in 1982, it was a move which surprised many. And he climbed rapidly up the political ladder in the party and in government, where he held multiple ministerial posts.
Just over a decade later, in his mid 40’s, he was appointed deputy prime minister, and was widely expected to succeed Mahathir Mohammed, but tensions with his mentor, the Prime Minister over the Asian financial crisis of 1997, made them clash over the economy and corruption within the government.
Ibrahim was removed and jailed for alleged conviction and sodomy. He insisted the charges were deemed politically motivated.
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Ibrahim’s conviction was overturned in 2004 by the Supreme Court after Mahathir Mohammed had retired from politics after quitting as Prime Minister.
He returned to politics, leading his own Reformist Party close to defeating the ruling UMNO party in the 2013 election, only to have new sodomy charges filed against him and being sent back to jail in 2015.
But as opposition to then-prime minister Najib Razak grew over the huge 1MDB scandal, Mahathir came out of retirement, reconciled with Ibrahim, and together they helped inflict the first-ever defeat of the ruling party in 2018, resulting in the King granting Ibrahim a pardon.
But the deal they made – that Mahathir, already in his 90s, would hand him the top job, fell through in 2020.
Now after a 25-year wait filled with political and legal challenges during which he spent almost a decade in jail, Ibrahim has reached the summit of his political career.
How he knits together a coalition that will not unravel will be seen in the days and weeks ahead.
(Additional information from the BBC)
Editor Oloyede Oworu
