ANKARA (AA): Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the country’s 10th prime minister on Thursday, following a days-long post-elections deadlock, local media reported.<\/p>\n
The swearing-in ceremony took place at Kuala Lumpur’s National Palace.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim, 75, was appointed prime minister by King Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah five days after the 15th general elections, which panned out with a hung parliament, leaving it up to the monarch to choose the party with the most constituencies .<\/p>\n
Though Ibrahim-led Alliance of Hope, or Pakatan Harapan (PH), has secured most seats in parliament in the Nov. 19 general elections, it is still short of forming a government on its own.<\/p>\n
The PH secured 82 seats, while former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin-led National Alliance or Perikatan Nasional (PN) got 73 seats.<\/p>\n
It is, nonetheless, unclear which party or alliance Ibrahim will choose to form the government, which has to face a slew of challenges lying ahead, ranging from economy to political stability.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, Malaysia’s Council of Rulers decided to back Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister, as the country’s new premier, the Malaysiakini news website reported.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the king met with the two leaders and proposed a unity government, which Yassin rejected. Later that day, the monarch summoned eight other council members for a meeting to end the deadlock.<\/p>\n
Support from the National Front, or Barisan Nasional (BN), with 30 lawmakers, is seen to be a decisive factor in the new setup.<\/p>\n
Another bloc Sarawak Parties Alliance, or Gabungan Party Sarawak (GPS), with 23 seats, had indicated it would support the Yassin-led group but was indecisive.<\/p>\n
To be the leader of the parliament, any party or alliance must secure the support of at least 112 lawmakers in a 222-seat house.<\/p>\n
Stunning comeback<\/strong><\/p>\n Ibrahim’s rise to power marks a stunning comeback for a man who at the peak of his political career was suddenly sacked and jailed by the government of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad in the 1990s.<\/p>\n Once seen as a highly-potential replacement for Mahathir, he fell out with the former “iron man” over the handling of the Southeast Asian country’s economy during the famous Asian financial crisis.<\/p>\n Subsequently, he was convicted and jailed on corruption and sodomy charges, which were widely believed to be politically motivated.<\/p>\n His conviction was overturned in 2004, but he was sentenced to prison again in 2015 on a similar fresh charge.<\/p>\n He was pardoned by the king after Mahathir reconciled with him on the heels of a massive corruption scandal involving then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2018.<\/p>\n Mahathir and Ibrahim, later, joined hands and defeated Razak’s party in the 2018 elections, bringing the former to the Prime Minister’s Office again.<\/p>\n However, the top job slipped from his hand again when a deal in which then-95-year-old Mahathir would hand over power to Ibrahim fell through in 2020.\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Malaysia\u2019s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the country\u2019s 10th prime minister on Thursday, following a days-long post-elections deadlock, local media reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":52369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}