Anwar Ibrahim's wife tests political waters

By Nelson Graves

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): She has a following and a cause, but there is no guarantee that Wan Azizah Wan Ismail will be the Cory Aquino of Malaysian politics.

Anwar Ibrahim's wife has gained international prominence since her husband was sacked, arrested, beaten and indicted.

Now she has embarked on a nationwide tour to test the political waters and may run head-to-head against her husband's former mentor, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, in elections that must be held by April 2000.

Few deny this articulate woman with a grievance would make a formidable candidate. But while her husband's case provides her with a springboard, it is also her dilemma.

Anwar, although excommunicated from Mahathir's United Malays National Organization (UNMO), refuses to cut his ties to the party which has led every governing coalition since independence in 1957.

UMNO is the political umbrella for mainstream Malays -- the dominant ethnic group -- and the linchpin of the Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition that governs all but one state and controls a four-fifths majority in the lower house of parliament.

Anwar, who was one small step from the prime minister's post before he was summarily sacked in September, knows his most realistic hope of ever attaining power is through UMNO.

But the failure of a dissident strand that emerged from a split in UMNO in the late 1980s and early 1990s to oust Mahathir is a powerful reminder of the upward struggle facing Anwar, notwithstanding the threat of a prolonged jail term.

Wan Azizah -- seen by Anwar's supporters as an innocent victim of power politics -- commands a ready following. She has drawn thousands to gatherings around the country, including more than 10,000 in Mahathir's own constituency last week.

"It seems as if it's the only thing people have been talking about," a woman resident of Kubang Pasu district in the northern state of Kedah, Mahathir's political base, said last week. Other residents spoke openly of mounting dissatisfaction with Mahathir.

Wan Azizah said there was a very good chance she would run against Mahathir but had not yet made up her mind.

No sooner had she dipped her toe into Kedah politics than it was announced Mahathir had appointed a new strategist in Kubang Pasu, former state chief minister Osman Aroff.

Osman, who replaces the district UMNO chief as Mahathir's personal representative, said last Saturday the prime minister had told him to gear up the election machinery. He shrugged off Wan Azizah's potential challenge.

"There is no problem if she wants to contest there, but I don't think she can win," he said.

Mahathir's party appears most threatened in the Moslem Malay rural heartland where the fundamentalist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) is strongest. PAS already controls the northeastern state of Kelantan, and is setting its sights on the nearby provinces of Terengganu, Perlis and Kedah.

A devout Moslem married to a politician who started his career in the Islamic youth movement, Wan Azizah might seem a natural PAS candidate.

But unless Anwar breaks with UMNO, which he has resolutely refused to do despite being expelled and charged with crimes, she must keep PAS at arm's length, depriving the opposition of a unifying force.

In any case, PAS leaders have said the party is not ready for a woman prime minister.

Although Anwar's case has given the opposition a shot in the arm, it remains deeply fragmented. Opposition parties have linked together along with a dozen odd non-governmental organizations to form a coalition, Gerak, to denounce alleged rights abuses.

But the two main opposition parties -- PAS and the largely urban Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) -- remain suspicious of each other and an electoral alliance is still a distant dream.

DAP chief Lim Kit Siang predicts the opposition will make a dent in the Barisan Nasional's huge four-fifths majority and may even deprive it of the two-thirds needed for critical parliamentary votes.

But he remains skeptical that the opposition can take power.

"The groundswell for change is there but in terms of electoral gains, it's very hard to say," Lim said.