Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim won a landslide victory in a special election for a Parliament seat Aug. 26, strengthening his campaign to topple the government and become the next prime minister despite sodomy charges against him.

The official count showed Anwar defeated the governing coalition's candidate for a seat from a semirural district in the northern industrial state of Penang.

Anwar's re-entry into Parliament would formally complete the political rehabilitation of a man who was fired as deputy prime minister in 1998, and jailed for six years after he was convicted of corruption and sodomizing his family driver. Anwar is now facing trial on new charges that he sodomized a male aide in June. He calls the latest sodomy charge "most sickening" and a politically motivated attack.