Anwar, the new Prime Minister (Mrs Nathan, this is to be graded)

On September 2nd 1998, Anwar was fired by Mahathir from the cabinet and. he was accused of sodomy. He was released later when it was found out that he was actually innocent. Surprisingly, he was sworn back into the parliament on August 29 2008, with the fact that he is once again accused of sodomy.

Now, after a decade, the government once again claimed that Anwar has committed sodomy. Unfortunately for them, the people now decide to put their faith in Anwar as shown in the by-election. This could be a shift in people’s mindset as they find Barisan Nasional to be unable to improve Malaysia. It could also mean that as more and more people get educated, they feel that the government is using sodomy to try and make Anwar seem less credible when he is the suitable man for prime minister.

Contrary to popular belief, Barisan Nasional is no longer winning the support of the Malays through its better treatment of the Malays. Instead, the Malays are split between Barisan Nasional’s Malay supremacy and the opposition who pushes for multiracialism. The interesting fact is that Malays whom support the opposition are actually the urban well-educated ones. This actually shows that the more educated Malays no longer feel that Malay supremacy will do well to the economy, and hence justifying their slant towards the opposition.

As for their Chinese and Indian counterparts, most of them had voted either for Democractic Action Party or the People’s Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Rakyat in malay). Both of the two parties belong to the opposition coalition, or known as Pakatan Rakyet. This would add on to Anwar’s chance of being the prime minister due to the support of the citizens.

Anwar had claimed that he can win the support of 30 Barisan Nasionals to his side as to achieve majority by mid September. I do not deny that he certainly has the capability to reach his goal now, but I feel that the problem would still lie with how he would to form the new government. If he is to take over the government and be voted Prime Minister, he still has the problem of appeasing certain members of the opposition coalition.

The main problem would be to come to a compromise that would make the opposition all agree to it. This would be hard due to the difference in views of the three different parties. Democratic Alliance Party would want democratic and a multiracial Malaysia, People’s Justice Party also want a multiracial Malaysia, but Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia in malay) wants a Islamic Malaysia.

Overall, I feel that Anwar’s so-called sodomy is a frame by the Barisan Nasional because they seemed to be in frenzy to as to try any method to stop Anwar from taking over the government and becoming the new Prime Minister. Nevertheless, he still has to prove that he is innocent before everyone will believe him.