Anwar Ibrahim has been appointed as the new Prime Minister of Malaysia. It has been 24 years in the making, with 11 of those years in prison. This is a new chapter for Malaysia. It looks like the beginning of the end of the Mahathir political empire in Malaysia. Anwar Ibrahim is the only prime minister candidate in the 15th General Election who is running as a PM for all Malaysians, not just for the Malay-Muslim majority. Hopefully he can steer Malaysia out of the deep mess the country is in since 2020.
To many pro-China observers observing Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim is a suspicious figure, and rightly so. He is close to Erdogan, and some US officials. His political campaign had been historically funded by the NED. Nevertheless, I have followed this man since my childhood, and am quite confident that Anwar Ibrahim will not be a problem for China. He does not have any real pro-US or pro-China agenda. He just has a neutral foreign policy. Here are my arguments:
1) Anwar Ibrahim had never been officially anti-China.
2) He does not have the characteristic of a US-NED puppet such as: robotic obedience to the US, arrogant, cowardly, clueless, hateful, or just plain stupid. He is not a spineless politician. He chose to go to jail over false charges, even when foreign political asylum was offered to him. He refused to compromise on his values of anti-corruption, and anti-racism, even when it offered him a shortcut to become PM many years ago.
3) When a Chinese reporter asked him about his views about Malaysia-China relations, he expresses a desire to upgrade it. He also mentions that China will be 'pivotal' to Malaysia's economic recovery.
4) He is a total opposite to Mahathir. He had always stood firm on anti-racism. He has a long history of being fair to the Malaysian Chinese and other minorities. He champions national unity, not division and hatred. This kind of leader will have little problems with China, and will be difficult for America to hijack.
5) Some might compare Anwar to Aung San Suu Kyi, but even she was pragmatic enough to not become truly anti-China.
The ones who actually actively steered Malaysia to be anti-China are the Malay-Islam supremacists like Mahathir, Muhyiddin Yassin, and Hadi Awang. These odious characters, especially Mahathir have a long history of hatred and discrimination against the Malaysian Chinese.
It is under Mahathir that Malaysia cancelled many Chinese-backed BRI projects in Malaysia, and trying to steer Malaysia towards Japan. Mahathir had also openly condemned China during the 2019 HK riots. Mahathir had also antagonized Singapore, due to his old hatred of ethnic-Chinese majority Singapore.
After Mahathir resigned in early 2020. Muhyiddin Yassin, his protege took over as PM in a pseudo-coup. Under Muhyiddin's leadership, Malaysia selected Pfizer MRNA vaccines to be Malaysia's primary Covid-19 vaccine in a backdoor deal. Under his leadership, Ericsson was selected over Huawei to be the primary 5G infrastructure provider for Malaysia in yet another backdoor deal. Ericsson's bid was more expensive than Huawei, and offered no significant advantages. Anwar criticized this deal. Under both the Mahathir & Muhyiddin leadership, there was an effort to stop purchasing further Chinese weapons in favour of French ones. France is notorious for shady weapons deals with generous kickbacks, so you get the picture. It was also under Muhyiddin that Malaysia was getting more vocal in confronting China in the SCS. Finally, Muhyiddin along with his political allies promoted the politics of Sinophobia + Red scare in Malaysia. He claims to be against the US and Israel, but his actions makes him ironically one of the most US-aligned PM in Malaysian history.
During the recent General Elections, Muhyiddin campaigned on the agenda of Malay and Islamic supremacy. His political agenda and his followers can be considered as a Malay-Muslim style of 'Hindutva' movement in Malaysia. There were many millions of young Malay voters who supported this Malay-Muslim supremacy movement. Enough of them voted for Muhyiddin that the election ended up in a hung parliament for Malaysia. Fortunately for most Malaysians, Anwar and his faction had finally won the battle for the Malaysian government for the greater good of Malaysia. We had narrowly avoided a Malay-Muslim 'Hindutva' style government.
Time will tell if Anwar will be a great PM for Malaysia. But I do feel quite optimistic now. It is time to rebuild Malaysia and stop f***ing around with race and religion.
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