Malaysia marked its 51st birthday yesterday with a mammoth parade that did little to mask the uncertainties a reborn opposition poses to the government’s uninterrupted hold on power since independence from Britain in 1957.
Thousands of people marched in the historic Merdeka (Freedom) Square, watched by Malaysia’s king and government leaders. Fighter planes and helicopters roamed the sky above.
But beneath the pomp and gala, Malaysia’s embattled government is heading into major political turbulence.
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim says he is seeking to win over 30 defectors from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition to form a new government by his self-imposed deadline of Sept. 16.
Anwar said on Saturday his opposition alliance would not use money or blackmail to woo defectors.
“The MPs can see the trend among the people who are demanding change,” he said. “That’s why they are keen to support a party that is fair to all races.”
Anwar’s Pakatan Rakyat alliance, which made unprecedented gains in March general elections, has 82 seats in the 222-seat parliament. It needs 30 more to win a simple majority.
Malaysia’s embattled prime minister appealed for the nation’s support in an independence day message yesterday.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi led the nation in celebrations with a firework display on Saturday night.
Abdullah, who has faced calls to quit from colleagues within his own party after failing to check the rise of the opposition, urged the country to remain united as it faced high inflation and a global slowdown.
“I am confident and believe that all the trials we are facing today can be overcome if we remain united and work together with firm determination,” he said. “A united people is the country’s strongest line of defense in facing any situation both internally and externally.”
“No one citizen is recognized as being of a higher position than another in this nation. This nation belongs to all of us. Whether we rise or fall depends on all of us,” he said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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