KL opposition seeks to nominate Anwar

KL opposition seeks to nominate Anwar

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Malaysia's opposition alliance will try to nominate jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim as a candidate in the Nov. 29 election, his wife says.

"He will stand as a candidate in KL (Kuala Lumpur)," Azizah Ismail said, adding the constituency had already been decided. She declined to identify it, saying "they can do many things to prevent him from standing for election."

Azizah, head of the National Justice Party, said she herself would contest the Permatang Pauh constituency in Penang state -- which her husband held for the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), dominant partner in the National Front.

Mahathir sacked Anwar as deputy premier and finance minister in September 1998. He was later that month expelled from UMNO and detained.

A candidate need not be present in person to file nomination papers on Saturday.

Anwar is the candidate for premier of the alliance, which includes the National Justice Party, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS).

The country's Election Commission, however, remained undecided on Thursday on whether Anwar Ibrahim could contest a seat in Parliament, even as the jailed politician and his wife emerged as leading opposition candidates in the Nov. 29 general election.

The commission spokesman Muhamad Aszahari Abdul Rahman said the matter would be determined by polling officials on Saturday when nominations are filed, he said. "We cannot say yes or no yet."

Anwar, the ousted deputy prime minister and handpicked successor to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, is serving a six- year jail term for abuse of power and is standing trial for sodomy. He vehemently denies the charges against him and claims they are part of a conspiracy to ruin him.

Malaysia's opposition leader on Thursday called on 680,000 registered voters to protest against their exclusion from general elections this month, saying they had been denied "their most precious democratic right".

Parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) said the bloc of voters would have played a decisive role in up to 80 of 193 constituencies at issue in the Nov. 29 snap polls.

"This is why the 680,000 new voters who have become the latest victims of undemocratic and unconstitutional abuses of power in Malaysia should come forward to make their protests heard," he said in a statement.

The new batch of voters -- who represent some seven percent of the electorate -- registered earlier this year but will not become eligible to cast ballots until early 2000.

The four opposition parties, which have never held power in Malaysia, say many of the new voters are young and oppose Mahathir, who has been in power since 1981.

Mahathir called on an outspoken state university professor on Thursday to step down because of his lawsuit against Malaysia's Election Commission.

Mahathir described the lawsuit, filed by Jomo Sundaram, as "an irresponsible act," the national news agency Bernama reported. Jomo, a renown economist at the premier University of Malaya, sued on Wednesday to halt the Nov. 29 vote because the Election Commission barred nearly 700,000 new voters from participating.

The opposition-allied professor said he was one of those potential voters who cannot participate because the commission claims it can't complete the new registration roll until next year.

Jomo said barring him from voting was a violation of his constitutional rights.

Reports from Manila quoted Philippine Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon as saying on Thursday that Mahathir will not attend this month's Southeast Asian summit in Manila because of elections at home.