Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim appointed new prime minister
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was appointed new premier on Thursday_ the sultan's palace said_ and will be sworn in at 5 pm.
A general election on Saturday ended in an unprecedented hung parliament with neither of two main alliances_ one led by Anwar Ibrahim and the other former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin_ immediately able to secure enough seats in parliament to form a government.
Anwar Ibrahim appointment caps a three-decade long journey from heir apparent to a prisoner convicted of sodomy_ to longtime opposition leader.
The 75-year-old has time and again been denied the premiership despite getting within striking distance over the years: he was deputy PM in the 1990s and the official prime minister-in-waiting in 2018.
In between_ he spent nearly a decade in jail for sodomy and corruption in what he says were politically motivated charges aimed at ending his career.