Prime minister of Malaysia since 2022, and a native of Penang. He was formerly the deputy and later nemesis of Mahathir Mohamad. In 2018 the two men joined forces to topple Najib Razak, delivering the first-ever electoral defeat for UMNO, Malaysia's long-dominant party. After Mahathir lost power in 2020, Anwar eventually became prime minister two years later.
Anwar campaigned against the country's long-standing affirmative-action policies favouring the Malay majority when in opposition, but in office says they will not change any time soon. His Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition has back-pedalled on many of its promises, fuelling disillusionment among young Malays.
Anwar spent some of his long period in opposition in jail on charges he said were politically motivated. He might have been expected to reform the MACC, Malaysia's anti-corruption commission, which has long been perceived as an attack dog for the government. Instead, he has three times extended the tenure of Azam Baki, the chief commissioner since 2020. Critics accuse him of using the MACC as a political weapon and of stalling on calls from politicians in his own ruling coalition for a royal commission to investigate the body. He has also been accused of hypocrisy: when Na'imah Khalid, the widow of the businessman Daim Zainuddin, retained an international consultancy to fight what she calls a politically motivated MACC campaign against her family, a police inquiry was opened into whether she was trying to "topple" the government—yet Anwar's own party once retained an American firm to lobby for his freedom. Anwar insists the cases are different, involving not one man's freedom but "the entire system in this country." James Chin, an expert on Malaysia at the University of Tasmania, says governments have "always used [the MACC] to go after the opposition."
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.