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KUALA LUMPUR - The dramatic 1998 sacking of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim will be probed after Malaysia's highest court agreed to hear a legal challenge to the dismissal, officials said Tuesday.
Anwar was ousted by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in September 1998 and subsequently charged with corruption and sodomy in a court case where he famously appeared with a black eye after being beaten by the police chief.
After spending six years in jail and finally having the sex charges quashed, he has made a spectacular return to the political stage at the helm of a resurgent opposition alliance.
Anwar's Keadilan party confirmed the Federal Court had given the green light for him to challenge the constitutionality of his sacking, which he says was carried out improperly without the king being first advised.
Rather than being aimed at having Anwar reinstated, the case is designed to probe the incident which reverberates through Malaysian politics to this day, said Keadilan's information chief Tian Chua.
"It will enable to us to understand a little bit how the events unfolded during the days of Anwar's sacking," he told AFP. "Mahathir might have to be called to justify or to explain the process."
"It will be a moral victory," he added.
The Federal Court did not fix a date for the appeal on the case, which was rejected by the High Court in 1998.
"It's not an issue of reinstatement because we know that the reshuffling of Cabinet is the right of the prime minister," said Tian.
"The grounds is that he was sacked without the constitutional rules being followed."
The opposition alliance claimed a third of parliamentary seats and five states in March general elections, shaking the Barisan Nasional coalition which has ruled for half a century.
Anwar says he is now poised to form a new government with the help of government defectors. - AFP/ir
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