PM Mahathir must go, says Islamic opposition leader

PM Mahathir must go, says Islamic opposition leader

KOTA BARU, Malaysia (Reuters): A senior leader of Malaysia's Islamic opposition says the country's divided Malay community will not unite until Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is replaced by jailed former finance minister Anwar Ibrahim.

"He has to go," Wan Abdullah Rahim Wan Abdullah, Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) speaker in Kelantan state assembly and a senior opposition figure told Reuters.

"Dr Mahathir is a liability to the nation now, everybody has to accept that."

The stance is a blow to Mahathir's United Malay National Organization (UMNO), which has led every coalition since independence in 1957 and wants talks with PAS to try shore up support among the country's majority Malay community.

Officials from both groups have met at various levels, but talks at full leadership level have been indefinitely postponed. UMNO's popularity is probably at its lowest ever among Malays.

Despite winning three times as many seats as PAS in elections of November 1999, UMNO attracted less than 50 percent of the Malay vote and lost two states in the northeast -- Kelantan and Terengganu.

Mahathir, the dominant figure in Malaysian politics for the past two decades, says UMNO and PAS can talk about anything, but there should be no pre-conditions.

But a key issue for PAS is the case of Anwar, who is serving a 15-year jail term for sex and graft charges he says are trumped up.

"The main factor now and the main actor now is ... Anwar Ibrahim. Will he come out? Will he be pardoned? Will he be able to lead UMNO? I think he's the anchor man," Rahim said in an interview late on Thursday.

Mahathir and Anwar are the two most divisive figures in Malaysian politics.

Anwar says Mahathir toppled him to prevent a leadership challenge and used the instruments of law and order to keep him in jail and out of his way.

The prime minister says his ex-deputy was immoral and unqualified to succeed him.

The severity of the sentence shocked many Malaysians and PAS has since backed Anwar.

Mahathir was reported recently by state news agency Bernama as saying PAS could re-join UMNO's Barisan Nasional (BN) alliance, as it briefly did in 1972 following the 1969 race riots. But Rahim said Mahathir would have to go first.

Despite this, even PAS members acknowledge Mahathir's accomplishment in lifting Malaysia up the economic rankings to become the most wealthy southeast Asian country outside of Singapore and Brunei.

Malaysia also recovered from the Asian crisis under Mahathir, while Anwar wanted to adopt International Monetary Fund policies since blamed for worsening the crisis in other countries.

Mahathir indicated after the last election he would not serve a sixth term but has left unclear any handover plans.

While UMNO is fraught by uncertainty, PAS celebrates its 50th birthday with high hopes for elections in 2004. "We have the trust of the people through the ballot boxes. That's why our approach now is more open, more moderate. There's a big change in our leaders' approach now," Rahim said.

PAS raised concerns in multi-racial Malaysia during the 1990s by proposing Islamic laws in Kelantan including amputation of limbs for theft and stoning to death for adultery.

The legislation never made it to the statute books.

Rahim's idea of a moderate PAS does not stretch to an equal role for women in politics although he suggested PAS might field women candidates at the next general election.

"In Islam, we do not consider women as a leader of the nation. They can be leaders among the womenfolk," he said.

Rahim lauds the 1979 revolution in Iran as a turning point for Islamic consciousness but is careful to distance PAS's goal of an Islamic state in Malaysia from what happens elsewhere. "We don't have any model, not Iran, not Pakistan, not Sudan, not Saudi, not Afghanistan especially.