Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim is still on guard for Parliament to be dissolved within the next few weeks, despite Prime Minister Najib Razak missing a much-speculated February 22 dateline to meet the King and call for the country's general elections.
"Maybe he is not ready yet but it will be very soon. Parliament may be dissolved in March and the election held not later than April," Anwar told Malaysia Chronicle on the sidelines of the PKR party's launch of a policy-formulating think-tank on Thursday.
No unrest, smooth transition of power
During a question-and-answer session with guests who attended the launching of Institut Rakyat, a think-tank to formulate policies for good governance, Anwar was confident that if his Pakatan Rakyat coalition won the federal government, there would be a smooth transition of power.
He pointed to a recent ground-breaking meeting he had with 4 retired military generals, who still wield enormous influence over the rank and file in army, navy and air force. They later attended a ceramah (political talk) with him in Kuala Lumpur during the Chinese New Year festivities.
"This was not highlighted in the media. We can guess why," said Anwar, referring to the Umno-BN's ham-fisted control over the press.
"The four generals have promised there will not be any unrest or trouble as some quarters in Umno-BN have been threatening."
The 4 generals are Lt Jen (B) Datuk Abdul Ghafir Abdul Hamid (Darat or Land), Brig Jen (B) Datuk Abdul Hadi Al-Khatab (Udara or Air), Laksamana Pertama (B) Haji Imran Abd Hamid (Laut or Sea) dan Brig Jen (B) Datuk Najmi Ahmad (Kagat).
Earlier in a Bloomberg interview, Anwar had also expressed the same view of a "seamless" power transition.
“The police has changed in the last few months. There’s hardly been any harassment from the police in all our programs. It’s a pure change,” Bloomberg reported Anwar as saying.
Against the odds
The 64-year-old is hugely popular with the Malaysian masses, who respect him for having stood up to the enormous pressure heaped on him by his former boss Mahathir Mohamad and recently by the Najib administration.
Anwar, a former deputy prime minister, was thrown in jail and tortured over sodomy charges that were manifestly fabricated by the Umno-BN leadership in a bid to stop his political rise. The courts have acquitted him of the charges and he has not looked back since he was freed from a 6-year jail term in 2004.
Anwar had joined the academia after his release. He taught at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a visiting fellow and senior associate member, and at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, where he was a Distinguished Senior Visiting Fellow.
He was persuaded to return to politics in 2006 and is acknowledged to be the glue that binds the Pakatan coalition of PKR, DAP and PAS - three differently profiled parties with dissimilar ideologies but a common goal of wishing to topple the decadent and corruption-riddled Umno-BN.
107 seats in the bag, corruption his first "message"
Many political analysts now rate him and Pakatan as having a better than even chance of securing the federal government. PKR insiders believe that as many as 107 seats of out the 222 in Parliament are in the bag for the Pakatan, which also consists of the DAP and PAS.
"We rather be cautious than over-optimistic. We are working very hard to win another 7 seats at least so that we can form a simple majority. Once that is done, we expect a huge crossover of BN Members of Parliament. They are all fed up of the corruption and scandal but they can't make a move yet," PKR leader Wong Chen told Malaysia Chronicle on the sidelines of the launch.
Members of the audience at the Institut Rakyat launch had also asked Anwar what would be the first thing he would do once he got to Putrajaya, the seat of the federal government. His reply was that it would be to send the message down the line that corruption would no longer be tolerated.
"I will send whoever I catch to Sungei Buloh," Anwar vowed.
Malaysia Chronicle
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