Anwar Ibrahim named Malaysia Prime Minister

The leader of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, Anwar Ibrahim, has been named as the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

The country’s national palace, on Thursday, announced via a statement that the swearing-in ceremony for Anwar will take place at 5:00 p.m. local time (0900 GMT) at the national palace.

The palace stated that Malaysia needs a stable government that will reinvigorate the economy and the country’s development.

It added that Malaysia had been in a state of political stalemate following the results of an indecisive snap national polls on November 19, with no political coalition or party securing enough seats in the country’s lower house of parliament to form a government on its own.

However, Malaysian King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah held several audiences with the heads of major political coalitions in a bid to break the stalemate and convened the conference of rulers to deliberate on the matter.

Following the meeting, Anwar, whose party coalition had secured 82 seats in the polls making his group the biggest, was named as the country’s new prime minister, allowing the formation of a new government.

In the course of a long political career, Anwar Ibrahim, 75, has time and again been denied the premiership despite getting within striking distance over the years: he was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and the official prime minister-in-waiting in 2018.

In between, he spent nearly a decade in jail for sodomy and corruption in what he says were politically motivated charges aimed at ending his career.

The uncertainty over the election threatened to prolong political instability in the Southeast Asian country, which has had three prime ministers in as many years, and risks delaying policy decisions needed to foster economic recovery.

Malay Muslims are two-thirds of Malaysia’s 33 million people, who include large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.

Many rural Malays fear they may lose their privileges with greater pluralism under Anwar.

The Star