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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s new Cabinet led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in on Saturday, after divisive polls last month.
Anwar became Malaysia’s 10th premier on Nov. 24 after a general election that produced no outright winner ended in a hung parliament.
With his reformist alliance Pakatan Harapan failing to secure a simple majority, he eventually formed a coalition government with the help of other political blocs.
Anwar unveiled his Cabinet lineup in a televised speech on Friday night, taking himself the Finance Ministry portfolio — a Cabinet role he first held 30 years ago — and appointing two deputy prime ministers: Ahmad Zahid Hamidi from the Barisan Nasional alliance, which had long dominated Malaysia’s political scene, and Fadillah Yusof, another key coalition partner from Gabungan Parti Sarawak, a regional Borneo-based bloc.
“The strength of the unity government has exceeded the two-thirds support in the parliament. This mandate has given us the confidence to form a stronger cabinet line-up and we will work as a team,” Anwar said as he announced the lineup.
Anwar unveiled his Cabinet lineup in a televised speech on Friday night, taking himself the Finance Ministry portfolio — a Cabinet role he first held 30 years ago — and appointing two deputy prime ministers: Ahmad Zahid Hamidi from the Barisan Nasional alliance, which had long dominated Malaysia’s political scene, and Fadillah Yusof, another key coalition partner from Gabungan Parti Sarawak, a regional Borneo-based bloc.
The new ministers, some clad in traditional Malay attire, took their oath on Saturday before King Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur.
The government with many new faces was expected to bring stability following a spate of political uncertainty in the Southeast Asian country, which saw three prime ministers in as many years. Anwar said good governance, spurring the economy, and reducing the burden of living costs will be their top priorities.
“This is the most stable lineup we can expect from the new administration,” BowerGroupAsia director Adib Zalkapli told Arab News. “He has to balance the demands of all political parties in the coalition.”
The appointment of Hamidi as one of Anwar’s deputies had raised eyebrows as it appeared to contradict his anti-corruption platform. Hamidi, president of the Barisan Nasional coalition and the United Malays National Organization, has been charged with graft and was a key ally of jailed ex-leader Najib Razak.
Dr. Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said the move was necessary.
“Anwar needs Zahid to keep the Malay nationalist party UMNO with him,” he told Arab News.
Ethnic Malays make up a majority of Malaysia’s 33 million population, which also has a significant population of ethnic Chinese and Indians.
Dr. James Chin, a professor of Asian Studies at the University of Tasmania, said Anwar represented “a moderate Malaysia.”
“Most Malaysians will welcome this cabinet,” Chin told Arab News. “This cabinet has a better reflection of the multiracial society in Malaysia.”
ISLAMABAD: Twenty-seven people were lashed in public on Thursday in a northern Afghan province as punishment for alleged adultery, theft, drug offenses and other crimes, according to an official with the Supreme Court in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The punishments underscored the intentions by Afghanistan’s new rulers to continue hard-line policies implemented since they took over the country in August 2021 and to stick to their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
A statement from the court said the lashings took place in Parwan province, with 18 men and nine women punished in all.
Abdul Rahim Rashid, an official with the court, said the men and women were convicted by three courts in each case and were each lashed between 25 to 39 times. An unspecified number of those punished also received two-year prison terms in Charakar, the provincial capital, he added.
“There were different cases with different types of punishment, which all were approved by the courts and implemented in a public gathering of locals and officials” said Rashid.
Provincial officials and local residents attended the public lashings, during which officials spoke about the importance of implementing Sharia law in society, added the court statement.
Thursday’s lashings come a day after the Taliban authorities executed an Afghan convicted of killing another man, the first public execution since the former insurgents took over Afghanistan last year.
The execution, carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father, took place in western Farah province before hundreds of spectators and many top Taliban officials, according to Zabihullah Mujahid, the top Taliban government spokesman. Some officials came from the capital Kabul.
A separate court statement said that earlier this week, three men convicted of theft were lashed in public in eastern Paktika province.
During the previous Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the group carried out public executions, floggings and stoning of those convicted of crimes in Taliban courts.
After they overran Afghanistan in 2021, in the final weeks of the US and NATO forces’ pullout from the country after 20 years of war, the Taliban had initially promised to allow for women’s and minority rights. Instead, they have restricted rights and freedoms, including imposing a ban on girl’s education beyond the sixth grade.
The former insurgents have struggled in their transition from warfare to governing amid an economic downturn and the international community’s withholding of official recognition.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the main goal of a proposed safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was to “stop Ukraine shelling.”
Both Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of shelling the plant, Europe’s biggest nuclear power station, risking causing a nuclear accident.
The plant has come under repeated shelling since Russia seized it shortly after launching its invasion in February, prompting the IAEA nuclear safety watchdog to call for a demilitarised safety zone around the plant.
BANGKOK: Thai soldiers clashed with suspected drug smugglers in a forested area in the country’s north near the Myanmar border, killing 15, authorities said Thursday.
The soldiers encountered the group of suspects carrying backpacks Wednesday evening and ordered them to stop, but they instead opened fire, according to the Pha Muang Task Force, the military unit in charge of security in Thailand’s northern border provinces.
A firefight ensued for about 10 minutes, the agency said. No soldiers were wounded but on Thursday morning when the military returned to inspect the scene in the Fang district of Chiang Mai province, they found 15 suspected smugglers dead and 29 backpacks packed with crystal meth, authorities said.
It was still being investigated whether the suspects had brought the meth in from Myanmar. The route is a common one for drugs being smuggled into Thailand.
The exact quantity of crystal meth seized was also not immediately available, and the task force did not say whether any suspects are believed to have escaped.
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban authorities on Wednesday executed an Afghan convicted of killing another man, the first public execution since the former insurgents took over Afghanistan last year, a spokesman said.
The announcement underscored the intentions by Afghanistan’s new rulers to continue hard-line policies implemented since they took over the country in August 2021 and to stick to their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
The execution, carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father, took place in western Farah province before hundreds of spectators and many top Taliban officials, according to Zabihullah Mujahid, the top Taliban government spokesman. Some officials came from the capital Kabul.
The decision to carry out the punishment was “made very carefully,” Mujahid said, following approval by three of the country’s highest courts and the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
The executed man, identified as Tajmir from Herat province, was convicted of killing another man five years ago and stealing his motorcycle and mobile phone. The victim was identified as Mustafa from neighboring Farah province. Many Afghan men use only one name.
Taliban security forces had arrested Tajmir after the victim’s family accused him of the crime, said a statement from Mujahid, the spokesman. The statement did not say when the arrest took place but said Tajmir had purportedly confessed to the killing. Mujahid added that Tajmir was shot three times by the victim’s father Wednesday with an assault rifle.
During the previous Taliban rule of the country in the late 1990s, the group carried out public executions, floggings and stoning of those convicted of crimes in Taliban courts.
After they overran Afghanistan in 2021, in the final weeks of the US and NATO forces’ pullout from the country after 20 years of war, the Taliban had initially promised to allow for women’s and minority rights.
Instead, they have restricted rights and freedoms, including imposing a ban on girl’s education beyond the sixth grade. They have also carried out public lashings across different provinces, punishing several men and women accused of theft, adultery or running away from home.
The former insurgents have struggled in their transition from warfare to governing amid an economic downturn and the international community’s withholding of official recognition.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern about the public execution, reiterating the UN position that “the death penalty cannot be reconciled with full respect for the right to life,” UN associate spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay said.
In comments late Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US condemned the public execution.
“We’re closely watching the Taliban’s treatment of the people of Afghanistan,” he said. “As we’ve said both publicly but also in our private engagements with the Taliban, their relationship with us, with the international community depends entirely on their own actions. It depends largely on their actions when it comes to human rights, when it comes to the rights of all Afghans, when it comes to the rights of women, girls, minorities and other marginalized communities in Afghanistan.”
AHMEDABAD, India: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was headed for a landslide victory in his home state of Gujarat on Thursday, a big boost to the Hindu nationalist party ahead of general elections due in 2024.
The western industrial state is a bastion of the BJP, which has not lost state assembly elections there since 1995. Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister for 13 years before becoming prime minister in 2014.
The BJP led in more that 80 percent of seats out of a total 182 in early counting of votes and was on its way to wrest a larger majority than in 2017, when it won 99 seats in the last state assembly elections.
The party was also set to surpass its best results in Gujarat when it won 127 seats in 2002.
Modi remains widely popular in the country, partly due to economic growth and also because of his strong base among India’s Hindu majority population, despite critics pointing to rising inflation, unemployment and growing religious polarization.
He is eyeing a third term as prime minister in 2024 and campaigned extensively across the state in the run up to the Gujarat vote.
The BJP’s main opposition in Gujarat came from the Indian National Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which emerged in 2012 out of an anti-corruption movement.
The 137-year-old Congress party led in 26 seats, far below the 77 seats it won in 2017, while the AAP was ahead in nine seats having won none the last time.
In another state election in the small northern state of Himachal Pradesh, the BJP was also hoping to ride on Modi’s aggressive campaigning to retain power. The BJP and the Congress were neck and neck for seats in the 68-seat assembly.
Victories in both Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will come as a welcome boost for the BJP, which lost control of the municipal corporation in the national capital Delhi to the AAP, in results announced on Wednesday.