KUALA LUMPUR
A weeks-long crisis within the Malaysian opposition coalition has been resolved after one of three member parties agreed to support coalition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, as the head of the country’s richest and most populous state, Selangor.
The crisis had threatened to weaken the chances of the Pakatan Rakyat, or the People’s Pact, wresting control of the country from the ruling coalition during the upcoming 2018 national election.
The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) - an ethnic Malay and religiously conservative party - had so far supported another politician, Abdul Khalid Ibrahim - the current state chief minister of the opposition-controlled state.
But the party changed its stance following an internal debate between party factions.
The opposition coalition has made important gains in the two last elections, in 2008 and 2013, threatening the parliamentary majority of the government coalition centered on the United Malay Union Organization (UMNO), which has led the country since independence in 1957.
Anwar Ibrahim's wife told the Anadolu Agency on Tuesday that the coalition would resubmit her name as the sole replacement candidate to the sultan of Selangor, Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who has the final word on who is to become chief minister, today.
“We are going to explain to the sultan that Abdul Khalid no longer possesses the majority of the state august house. As such, the candidate by the ruling coalition is myself, as the president of PKR,” she told AA.
If she succeeds, she would become the first female state chief minister in the history of Malaysia.
Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, meanwhile, told AA in an emailed response that the sultan, who is currently abroad, has summoned him for an audience in the coming week.
“Until something concrete is issued by the palace, I am still the legitimate chief minister of Selangor and the state administration goes on as it should be going,” he said.
Selangor has the largest gross domestic product (GDP) in Malaysia at over $41.2 billion (RM130 billion) annually, making up about 23 percent of the country’s total GDP. The state, which surrounds capital Kuala Lumpur, also had the largest population and lowest poverty rate.
Anwar Ibrahim, seen as the key challenger to the ruling party, has repeatedly been accused of sodomy and corruption by the government in proceedings widely believed to be unfair.
Despite being the frontrunner in March’s legislative elections in Selangor, he had been unable to run after being sentenced to five years in jail on charges of sodomy.
He has appealed the sentence.
Sodomy, even if consensual, is a crime in Muslim Malaysia and punishable by a jail term up to 20 years.
Former government doctor Wan Azizah - a three-time member of the House of Representatives – was a reluctant politician forced to the helm of the newly formed PKR in 1999 after her husband was sentenced to nine years jail over a 1998 sodomy charge, which the Supreme Court overturned in 2004.
Anwar Ibrahim has appealed the sentence and the Federal Court is expected to fix a date for his first hearing.
