Chances of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim winning a fresh mandate look increasingly fraught, experts say, as the unravelling of his coalition government picked up pace with threats of full-scale war between allies and the desertion by former stalwarts to another party over the weekend.
Anwar has presided over a period of relative political stability since he was appointed prime minister in November 2022 by then-king Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah, on condition that he include both allies and rivals in his administration.
But with his five-year tenure due to expire in less than two years, members of his ragtag unity government have begun to revert to old positions to reclaim support from their respective voter bases unhappy with the political compromises they made just to join the coalition.
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And it was Anwar himself who fanned the fires of political conflict on Sunday, when he declared that his ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition was ready to get into a scrap.
“If the drums of war are being beaten and people want to start a war, we are ready and we will fight,” he said at the PH annual convention in Johor.
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