Malaysia Without Anwar

Does democracy in Malaysia really depend on Anwar Ibrahim? If it does, Malaysia's 30 million people are in trouble. Anwar is back in jail: at least five years' imprisonment, and another five years' ban from political activity after that. He says he doesn't care: "Whether it's five years or ten it doesn't matter to me anymore. They can give me twenty years. I don't give a damn."

But of course he cares. By the time he's free to resume his role as opposition leader, he'll be at least 77. The People's Alliance, the three-party opposition coalition that he created, can't afford to wait ten years for him to be free. The real question is whether they can stay together without him as leader.

Malaysia is formally a democracy, but the same coalition of parties, the National Front, has won every election since 1957. In the 2008 and 2013 elections, however, Anwar's coalition began to cut seriously into the National Front vote. Indeed, in 2013 the People's Alliance actually got a majority of the votes cast, although the ruling coalition still won more seats in parliament.

But last Monday the Federal Court ruled that Anwar was guilty on a charge of sodomy (which is illegal in this Muslim-majority country) and sent him to jail. He had previously been acquitted of the charge, and many people in Malaysia suspect that the prosecutor appealed the case to move it up into the superior courts, which are more open to political influence than the lower courts. In other words, they're getting him out of the way.

The first time Anwar was charged with sodomy was in 1998, less than a month after he was fired as deputy prime minister. He had risen to the country's second highest political post with startling speed thanks to the support of long-ruling prime...