Malaysia set to announce Ibrahim-led cabinet

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) - Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will announce his cabinet members on Friday.

The announcement came after Ibrahim met with Malaysian King Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah for nearly an hour, the Free Malaysia Today news website reported.

Ibrahim was sworn-in as Malaysia’s 10th prime minister last month, after his Alliance of Hope, or Pakatan Harapan (PH), secured the most seats in parliament in the Nov. 19 general elections.

Despite failing to form a government on its own, Ibrahim has stitched together a unity government with the National Front, or Barisan Nasional (BN), which has 30 lawmakers in the 222-seat parliament.

Any party of coalition needs 112 to form a government in the Southeast Asian nation.

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.

Once seen as a potential successor to 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.

Subsequently, he was convicted and jailed on corruption and sodomy charges, which were widely believed to be politically motivated.

His conviction was overturned in 2004, but he was sentenced to prison again in 2015 on a similar fresh charge.

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.

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.

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.