Malaysia's ruling coalition is investigating claims that the opposition could seize power with the help of lawmakers who are considering defecting, reports said yesterday.
The dominant United Malays National Organization (UMNO) said it was sending teams out to check on rumored defections by members of coalition component parties who were alienated after disastrous March 8 election results.
"Some people are saying this... we will get our intelligence to check," UMNO secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said, according to the New Straits Times.
"Why should they buy our people over when we've already won?" he asked.
"They think we are weak because we lost in five states and we didn't get a two-thirds majority [in parliament]," he said.
SWITCHING SIDES
Emboldened by the results, the worst in the Barisan Nasional coalition's half century of rule over Malaysia, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has said that lawmakers have approached him about switching sides.
"I don't know how soon we can form the new government but we are moving in that direction," Anwar, a former Malaysian deputy prime minister who was forced to step down and jailed a decade ago, said earlier this week.
Anwar said that coalition lawmakers from Malaysia's eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island had been in contact with him to discuss switching sides.
The power bloc there has enough members to unseat the government if it were to change hands.
He has insisted that defectors would not be "bought" and other opposition figures have challenged the government to file a police report if they find any evidence of improper payments being made.
DENIAL
Amid reports that the first of the defectors had resigned from the coalition, the Sarawak United People's Party told state media that the stories were not true and insisted that its lawmaker Richard Riot was still a member of the party.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has dismissed Anwar's plans and downplayed any suggestions of splits within UMNO, despite a series of high-level resignations that shook up the party.
The prime minister's decision to streamline the cabinet and drop a number of veteran politicians in a new line-up announced on Monday has also alienated government lawmakers who were overlooked.
Barisan Nasional will have 140 lawmakers in the newly arranged 222-seat parliament, compared with 199 in the outgoing 219-seat parliament.
The opposition alliance won 80 seats compared with its previous number of 19.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS