Anwar Ibrahim, the man poised to become Malaysia’s new prime minister, is profiled in today’s Voice.  The full text of the email interview with him has been reproduced below:

To start off, why are you attempting to remove the current government from power?

In a democracy, imperfect though it is in Malaysia, you need two legitimacies to govern: a moral legitimacy and a political one.

The moral legitimacy stems from your entire deportment whilst governing – transparency of conduct, rule of law, separation of powers, integrity of office bearers, and the like.

The political legitimacy results from your effective command of the electorate and its legislators.

The National Front of Malaysia, in power for 51 years now, has been oozing its moral legitimacy to govern for at least a decade now. The judiciary was corrupted, the police force became dysfunctional, the civil service was reduced to a rubber stamp, money politics infected political parties, and matters to do with race and religion became a minefield. The economy is sluggish, now approaching quagmire status and the government has offered no solution to the problem of widespread joblessness, rampant inflation and the decline in foreign direct investment. In sum a tragic state of affairs after 51 years of governance.

The National Front’s political legitimacy was premised on its command of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Once before it lost that majority — in 1969 when race riots flared in the aftermath of that loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Anwar Ibrahim, a faculty member at the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Tal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding and former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, has declared that he will take power in Malaysia on September 16.  Ibrahim believes he has convinced 30 government MP’s to defect to the opposition, switching the balance in Parliament and allowing the opposition he leads to control the government.  The Malaysian government response isn’t exactly Robert’s Rules–the government sent at least 50 MP’s to Taiwan on a trip expected to last for more than a week.

Ibrahim is known as a crusader against corruption and served as the Malaysian Finance Minister during the Asian financial crisis of 1997.  Ironically, Ibrahim has previously been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment on corruption charges.  He has also been accused of homosexuality on multiple occasions, an offense carrying up to a 20 year prison sentence in Malaysia.

While at Georgetown, Ibrahim taught Contemporary Islam in Southeast Asia.

Photo from Flickr user BugBitesandCo. used under a Creative Commons license