Anwar, dressed in dark blue traditional Malay shirt, pants and cap, was sworn in as a legislator in a simple ceremony in the main chamber of Parliament amid loud thumping of desks by opposition members.

"I am glad to be back after a decade. I really feel vindicated. I feel great," said Anwar, who was forced to resign his Parliament seat in 1999 amid a sodomy allegation.

Anwar, who is facing a new sodomy allegation, was formally declared the leader of the three-party opposition alliance after he took the oath of office. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and most Cabinet ministers were not present.

Anwar, 61, regained his parliamentary seat in the northern Penang state by a landslide in a by-election Tuesday in which only one district was contested. It came on the heels of big gains by the opposition in the March general elections that loosed the government's 51-year grip on power.

Tuesday's election result is a "second political tsunami. The government is a Titanic that will sink," said Lim Kit Siang of the Democratic Action Party, a component of the opposition alliance.

Anwar has said he aims to be the next prime minister after bringing down the government by Sept. 16 via defections from disaffected members of Abdullah's ruling coalition.

"Anwar - whatever we think of him and many of us are deeply skeptical - is looking more and more like our future Prime Minister," wrote columnist Karim Raslan in The Star daily on Thursday.

"There is a mounting sense of inevitability to his impending succession," he wrote.

But significant hurdles remain, the biggest of them a new criminal charge that he sodomized a 23-year-old male aide. No date has been set for the trial. Under Malaysian law, even consensual sodomy is punishable by up to 20 years in jail.

Subscribe to The China Post and save.  Click hereSharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 800 characters max

Receive China Post promos

Respond to this email