SHOW OF SUPPORT
More than 7,000 people turned up at an impromptu rally late on Tuesday night in the biggest show of support for Anwar since the aide complained to police at the weekend about an alleged assault at a luxury Kuala Lumpur apartment last Thursday.
Police have yet to question Anwar, who has dismissed the allegation as a top-level political conspiracy to keep him from standing for parliament, and to stymie his campaign aimed at wooing defectors from the ruling National Front coalition.
Winning a seat in parliament would be the first step on the road to Anwar's wider ambition of leading the opposition to power for the first time in Malaysian history.
The sodomy case emerged at a time when Abdullah's UMNO party has been riven by dissent and the loose opposition alliance was making a bid to take power. The three-party alliance made historic gains in a March 8 general election, winning five of 13 state governments and coming within 30 seats of taking control of the 222-member parliament.
Anwar was jailed for six years on a charge of committing sodomy with an aide and a family driver after he broke with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad over the handling of the 1998 Asian financial crisis. The Federal Court overturned the conviction in 2004. Sodomy is a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison in mainly Muslim Malaysia.
Anwar has said he planned to file a legal deposition soon demonstrating that his accuser, Saiful Bukhari, had close ties with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his staff.
At the rally, Anwar said he would not sit quietly and allow a repeat of what happened to him 10 years ago. The crowd, who had gathered at the indoor stadium in Shah Alam just outside the capital two hours before he turned up late at night, chanted "Reformasi", the battle cry of his reform movement.
"We will fight. When we take over the country, the first thing we will do is to bring down the price of fuel," Anwar said.
