Malaysian opposition leader Anwar appointed prime minister

By Muhammad JuniadPublished On 05 Jan 2023

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was appointed prime minister on Thursday, the sultan’s palace said and will be sworn in at 5 p.m. (0900 GMT).

A general election on Saturday ended in an unprecedented hung parliament with neither of the two main alliances, one led by Anwar and the other by ex-premier Muhyiddin Yassin, immediately able to secure enough seats in parliament to form a government.

Anwar’s appointment caps a three-decade-long journey from heir apparent to a prisoner convicted of sodomy, to the longtime opposition leader.

The 75-year-old 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.