Anwar Ibrahim appointed as Malaysia’s new prime minister, the palace says

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was appointed prime minister on Thursday, the Sultan’s palace said, and will be sworn in at 5 p.m. local time.

A general election on Saturday ended in an unprecedented parliament in which neither of the two main alliances, one led by Anwar and the other by ex-Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, were immediately able to secure enough seats in parliament to form a government.

Anwar’s appointment caps a three-decade journey from heir to the throne to prisoner convicted of sodomy to longtime leader of the opposition.

The 75-year-old has been repeatedly denied the post of prime minister, despite coming within striking distance over the years: he was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and official prime minister in 2018.

In between, he spent almost a decade in prison on sodomy and corruption charges, which he says were politically motivated charges aimed at ending his career.