Published August 25, 2008

Anwar poll fight comes full circle after 26 years

By-election win tomorrow is vital to his bid to become prime minister

By S JAYASANKARAN
IN KUALA LUMPUR
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IN the 1982 general election, the then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad fielded a newcomer in the rural parliamentary constituency of Permatang Pauh, then considered a stronghold of the opposition Parti Islam SeMalaysia, or PAS.

Mr Anwar: Bookies are expecting him to win by at least 9,000 votes, fewer than his wife's 13,000

Anwar Ibrahim, running under Dr Mahathir's United Malays National Organisation, or Umno, won convincingly, prompting the prime minister to remark, 'The chicken that's barely sprouted feathers has shown himself to be a real rooster. I knew it was the right decision to put Anwar Ibrahim there.'

Twenty-six years on, everything's come full circle. On Tuesday, Mr Anwar will once again contest the seat but this time he will do so as a candidate for the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

He is being helped by PAS and the opposition Democratic Action Party and his opponent is Umno's Arif Shah Omar Shah.

For Mr Anwar, 61, the election is pivotal to his political future and a win tomorrow is absolutely crucial for him to enter Parliament and have a striking chance towards the premiership.

The de facto opposition leader has always maintained that he has silent support within the National Front coalition and can garner enough crossovers to engineer the government's collapse.

That is why all the big guns of the National Front have been brought to bear on Mr Anwar. Since nomination day almost two weeks ago, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak has been camped out in Permatang Pauh working the voters through tireless house-to-house campaigning.

And the personal attacks have been relentless. Deputy Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, who's also Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son-in-law, called Mr Anwar 'the biggest hypocrite on earth' and has made scathing references to Mr Anwar's alleged homosexuality.

Indeed, the opposition leader has other headaches. He has already been charged with allegedly sodomising an aide and is currently on bail. If he does get convicted, he will, once again, lose his seat and probably be cast out of politics forever given his age.

From the opposition's point of view, that would be a disaster. In the March 8 general election, Mr Anwar cobbled together an unlikely opposition coalition that almost succeeded in toppling the National Front, winning five states and denying the Front its usual two-thirds parliamentary majority. And almost every analyst agrees that he is the only one capable of keeping the opposition coalition intact.

Given the stakes, it is no wonder the Front is going all out. But Umno officials concede privately that it is an uphill task. Mr Anwar routinely attracts thousands to his daily ceramahs (mini-rallies) while Umno crowds generally number in the hundreds.

The constituency has close to 60,000 voters, almost 70 of which are ethnic Malay. Keadilan officials estimate that the bulk of the non-Malay votes will go to Mr Anwar but they are less sanguine about where the Malays will tilt.

'That will be the key,' one senior Keadilan official told BT. 'Umno has been harping on how Mr Anwar wants to do away with the New Economic Policy, and how the non-Malays have become more demanding after the March 8 election.'

The other factor will be an expected lower voter turnout because the election is being held on a working day.

Even so, bookies are expecting Mr Anwar to win by at least 9,000 votes, a figure that will be lower than his wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail who won the seat by over 13,000 votes during the March 8 election.