The honeymoon – if there is one – will be brutally short.
Anwar Ibrahim became Malaysia’s 10th prime minister last week, after an epic career in which he sought the job, and came closest to getting it, in more than a quarter of a century. But whatever joy she may have felt must now have been tempered by the daunting task before her.
The 75-year-old is a skilled orator with political experience and personal charisma, but has shown lapses in judgment in the past. Now he must muster all his energies to fix the economy, meet long-suppressed demands for reform, reduce ethnic mistrust and hold together an ineffective coalition.
His reformist, multi-ethnic Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition won 82 parliamentary seats in last month’s elections – more than any other political bloc, but far short of the 112 seats needed to form a government. Malaysia had its first hung parliament.
It then took five days of intense wrangling between different blocs for King Abdullah to choose Mr Anwar to lead the government. This was only possible because his old rival, UMNO, the party whose 61-year monopoly on power was challenged, finally agreed to partner with Mr Anwar and his allies in 2018. But it is an arrangement that worries many in both UMNO and PH.
Mr. Anwar’s first problem is the allocation of cabinet posts. UMNO and its allies won only 30 seats in the elections. But for cooperating with PH, he was given several cabinet positions.
Most controversial is the appointment of powerful UMNO president Ahmed Zahid as one of the two deputy prime ministers. The appointment was strongly opposed as Mr Zahid faces multiple criminal charges under former prime minister Najib Razak, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption.
UMNO, for its part, has pledged to back Mr Anwar in a confidence vote it plans to hold in parliament on December 19, but said little about how the uneasy alliance would work. .
