Day 8: Malaysia on Headlines (Sept 18)

Anwar calls for parliament vote to oust Malaysia PM
By Soo Ai Peng

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim called for parliament to be convened by next Tuesday to hold a vote of confidence in which he hopes to oust Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and form a new government.

Anwar insisted at a press conference on Thursday that he had won over sufficient MPs from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition as to form a new government, but declined to provide names or numbers, saying that would place the lawmakers at risk.

The date Anwar set to recall parliament, which is currently in recess, is one day before he is due in court on a charge that he sodomized a male aide. He denies the charge and says it is motivated by the government's desire to keep him out of power.

"We must realize this is now a minority government. The majority of MPs are with us now," Anwar told a news conference.

No one was immediately available to comment from the government.

Abdullah has refused to meet Anwar and denied that the 30 MPs the opposition needs to form the next government have deserted the ruling coalition, calling Anwar's claims a "mirage."

Anwar's three-party alliance has 82 MPs in the 222-strong Malaysian parliament and if it wins power, it will displace the coalition that has run this Southeast Asian country of 27 million people for over 50 years since independence from Britain.

The rivalry between Anwar and senior leaders in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the main party in the 14-strong ruling coalition is intense and deeply personal.

"A delay in his (Abdullah's) response would be interpreted as nothing short of a further sabotage of democratic process and abuse of executive powers," Anwar said.

Anwar was deputy prime minister and looked set for the top job until he was sacked by then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and imprisoned in the late 1990s on charges of sodomy and corruption.

The opposition has pressured the government since elections in March when it deprived it of a two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time.

Abdullah has come under pressure to quit ahead of a 2010 date agreed with his party to hand over power to his deputy Najib Razak and handed over the key finance ministry job to Najib on Wednesday, a day ahead of a meeting of top UMNO leaders.

Ever since Anwar was dismissed, the prime minister in Malaysia has held the finance post and Abdullah also hinted that he might leave office early.



DAMAGING UNCERTAINTY, ECONOMIC WORRIES
(Writing by David Chance; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

The prolonged political uncertainty has hit Malaysian assets hard, the stock market was down 25 percent this year even before the latest turn in the U.S. credit crisis forced investment banking giant Lehman Bros out of business.

Inflation in Malaysia has surged to close to 27-year highs and the country is now competing with other Asian nations who have enacted economic reforms to attract foreign investment.

The cost of insuring Malaysian bonds against default has risen to $176,729 per $10 million of debt from $90,185 prior to the March election, based on prices for 5-year credit default swaps, a barometer of risk.

Anwar, a former finance minister with a strong reputation among international investors for his reaction to Asia's financial crisis in 1997, said he was a better choice than Abdullah or Najib, who has no finance experience to lead the country.

"Even (with) a Pakatan Rakyat (his coalition) government it is going to be tough under the current economic problems," Anwar said.


(Both articles extracted from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080918/wl_nm/malaysia_politics_anwar_dc)



The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index closed at 991.66, down by 11.33 points while Dow Jones stood at 10,609.66 down 449.36 points. Nikkei down 260.49 points, bringing it to 11,489.30.