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Does democracy in Malaysia really depend on Anwar Ibrahim?

If it does, Malaysias 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 doesnt care: Whether its five years or ten it doesnt matter to me anymore. They can give me twenty years. I dont give a damn.

But of course he cares. By the time hes free to resume his role as opposition leader, hell be at least 77. The Peoples Alliance, the three-party opposition coalition that he created, cant afford to wait 10 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, Anwars coalition began to cut seriously into the National Front vote. Indeed, in 2013 the Peoples Alliance actually got a majority of the votes cast, although the ruling coalition still won more seats in parliament.

But on 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, theyre 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 countrys second highest political post with startling speed thanks to the support of long-ruling Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, but then he fell out with Mahathir (according to his own account) because of the latters lavish use of public funds to bail out the failing businesses of his children and cronies.

In any case, it was certainly in the ruling partys interest to silence him. No need to kill him, though; jail would keep him just as quiet. Many Malaysians believed from the start that the sodomy charge was politically motivated.

Anwar was convicted (on extremely contradictory evidence), and sentenced to nine years in prison. But he was released in only five years, after the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction in 2004. He immediately began trying to unite the opposition parties and create a coalition capable of challenging the National Front government that he had once served.

The Peoples Alliance was successful enough in the 2008 election to frighten the government, and by the strangest coincidence a second charge of sodomy was brought against Anwar only a couple of months later. Once again the evidence was flimsy and contradictory, and on this occasion the man who claimed to have been seduced had actually met with Prime Minister Najib Razak (of the National Front) two days before he laid the charges.

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Can Malaysian democracy thrive without Anwar?