Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Thursday rejected opposition demands to recall parliament for a confidence vote, prolonging his grip on power but also a deeply uncertain political environment. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had called for parliament to be convened by next Tuesday in the hope of ousting Abdullah which would then allow him to form a new government.
Abdullah, who is fighting for his political life after the government that has ruled the country for over 50 years suffered its worst ever election result in March, rebuffed the call to bring parliament back before the end of a recess in mid-October.
Anwar insisted at a press conference earlier that he had won over sufficient MPs from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition so as to form a new government, but declined to provide names or numbers, saying that would place them at risk. The date Anwar set to recall parliament is one day before he is due in court on a charge that he sodomised a male aide. He denies the charge and says it is motivated by the government's desire to keep him out of power.
"We must realise this is now a minority government. The majority of MPs are with us now," Anwar told a news conference. A leading constitutional lawyer said however that Anwar had no mechanism to force the return of parliament. "That is the power of the king, on the advice of the prime minister," Shad Saleem Faruqi told Reuters.
Anwar has said he will seek an audience with the king and Faruqi said the king "could exercise moral influence in persuading the prime minister to face the assembly". Abdullah however has refused point blank to meet Anwar and denied that the 30 MPs the opposition needs to form the next government have deserted the ruling coalition, calling Anwar's claims a "mirage". Anwar's three-party alliance has 82 MPs in the 222-strong Malaysian parliament and if it wins power, it will displace the coalition that has run this Southeast Asian country of 27 million people since independence from Britain.
"A delay in his (Abdullah's) response would be interpreted as nothing short of a further sabotage of democratic process and abuse of executive powers," Anwar said. The opposition has pressured the government since elections in March when it deprived it of a two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time.
Abdullah has come under pressure to quit ahead of a 2010 date agreed with his party to hand over power to his deputy Najib Razak and gave the key finance ministry job to Najib on Wednesday, a day ahead of a meeting of top UMNO leaders at which some members had threatened to try to push him out.
The prolonged political uncertainty has hit Malaysian assets hard, the stock market was down 25 percent this year even before the latest turn in the US credit crisis forced investment banking giant Lehman Bros out of business. Anwar, a former finance minister with a strong reputation among investors for his handling of Malaysia during Asia's financial crisis in 1997, said he was a better choice than Abdullah or Najib, who have no senior finance experience.
"Even (with) a Pakatan Rakyat (Anwar's coalition) government it is going to be tough under the current economic problems," he said. Anwar says that if he wins power, he will end what he says is endemic corruption, boost economic liberalisation and end a system of economic privileges for ethnic Malays that he says has failed to help people and damaged competitiveness to boot. "We think these policies would be positive for the economy and markets in the long term, but it will likely be a rough ride along the way," Cem Carcadag, economist at investment bank CSFB said in a report published on Thursday.