Analysis: What future for Anwar?

Anwar Ibrahim's dreams of being prime minister have been shuttered

The man once tipped to rule Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, has now been jailed for a total of 15 years. BBC's Frances Harrison examines what impact Anwar's life behind bars will have on Malaysia's politics.

In public life, Anwar used to be described as everything to everyone.

He was equally at home discussing the intricacies of international finance as he was debating with Islamic scholars or rousing a crowd with his humour and fiery rhetoric.

Heir apparent to one of Asia's most entrenched leaders, Anwar has now spent nearly two years in jail, paying the price for challenging his mentor, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Anwar's trial was carried out under heavy security

And he consistently maintained his innocence, saying: "I will continue to fight against the charges framed against me and in the name of justice, I will continue to fight."

Tens of thousands of people protested as Anwar was accused of corruption and sexual misconduct, then arrested by armed commandos and beaten unconscious by the country's police chief while in custody, resulting in his famous black eye.

Bid for power

Journalist and writer, Rehman Rashid, explains why normally politically passive Malaysians suddenly took to the streets:

"They may have been united in this incident. There was disgust as much as anything else, outrage and disgust in a sense that the way things are done in this country is not right, it doesn't reflect us, it doesn't reflect our values as well as it should."

All this outpouring of public rage and frustration coincided with Malaysia's worst economic crisis since independence.

Elsewhere in the region, governments fell - most dramatically in neighbouring Indonesia.

But Dr Mahathir managed to ride out the storm. As Professor Michael Liefer of the London School of Economics explains, Anwar in his bid for power, took courage from the fall of Indonesian President Suharto.

Prime Minister Mahathir was "determined to destroy Anwar"

"When Anwar Ibrahim began to use the idiom of those who challenged President Suharto as a way of claiming that Malaysia needed some form of creative destruction in order for it to move ahead, Doctor Mahathir saw this quite clearly as the gauntlet being laid down..... and he [was] determined to destroy Anwar Ibrahim. I think he's been virtually successful."

Second trial

By the time Anwar was first found guilty of misuse of power in April 1999, public support for him had already visibly waned.

This time, it was hundreds not thousands of Malaysians who took to the streets.

Locked away for six years and disqualified from politics for a further five, Anwar quickly began to fade from public memory.

Anwar's supporters have often clashed with police

Some political observers wondered why the authorities decided to press ahead with a second trial, only propelling Anwar back into the limelight.

"The significance of the particular charge of sodomy is that the actual charge is anathema within Malay culture, and therefore the object of the exercise is to destroy Anwar Ibrahim politically so that he will never again have any kind of effective role in Malaysian politics, " Professor Liefer explained.

Anwar may still be the leader of a coalition of Malaysian opposition parties, albeit from behind bars.

However, he is now a long way off from becoming the country's next prime minister.

That would require a royal pardon - recommended by Dr Mahathir or his successor - something that seems highly unlikely as long as Anwar remains a potent symbol for many Malaysians of what has gone wrong with their country's political life.