VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Malaysian political parties supporting Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Friday signed a cooperation pact promising to ensure stability, ahead of a confidence vote on the premier next week.

Anwar - who has spent more than two decades as an opposition figure - became prime minister last month, forming a government with rival political blocs after an election that produced a hung parliament.

He has promised to convene parliament on Monday for a confidence vote to prove his lower house majority, after rival and former premier Muhyiddin Yassin cast doubt on his support.

Anwar is Malaysia's fourth prime minister since 2020, after two previous administrations collapsed due to political turmoil. Malaysia this year passed laws to prevent future party defections, but the new rules do not stop political coalitions from switching allegiances as a bloc.

According to Anwar and other coalition leaders, the parties agreed to ensure political stability after years of turmoil, spurring the economy, good governance, and upholding the rights of the country's majority Malay community and Islam as its official religion.

"We agreed on the broad parameters and broad policies including to ensure the government is stable," he said after a ceremony where political party chiefs signed the pact.

"We concede that no party managed to have a clear majority, therefore... it makes a lot of sense that we have to achieve this sort of understanding based on shared principles and policies."

They promised to improve development in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo island. Support from Borneo-based blocs is crucial for Anwar to maintain his majority.

His government also includes the previous ruling coalition Barisan Nasional, which he spent much of his political career seeking to overthrow.

Barisan had ruled Malaysia for more than six decades before being voted out in a 2018 election amid widespread corruption allegations.

It returned to power last year, but was ousted again in last month's polls - coming in third to Anwar's and Muhyiddin's coalitions. (Reuters)

South Korea issued a strong protest against Japan's territorial claim over disputed islands made in a national security strategy released on Friday while cautiously responding to Tokyo's plans for an unprecedented military buildup.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol who took office in May has tried to improve ties with Tokyo which have been marred by the territorial row over the islands and historic disputes stemming from Japan's 1910-1945 occupation of Korea.

South Korea's foreign ministry on Friday demanded an immediate removal of the territorial claims from Japan's national strategy documents, saying in a statement that the move did nothing to help "building a future-oriented relationship" between the two countries.

The foreign ministry later said it summoned a senior diplomat from Japan's embassy in Seoul to lodge the protest. The defence ministry separately said it summoned a Japanese defence official to protest the claim.

The islands known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan are controlled by Seoul with a small contingent of coast guards.

In a separate statement, the foreign ministry said it hoped the implementation of Japan's new security policy will be transparent and contribute to regional peace and stability while continuing to uphold the spirit of is pacifist constitution.

Any exercise of attack capabilities against the Korean peninsula "must necessarily involve close consultations and agreement" with South Korea, it said, in an apparent reference to possible action to counter North Korea's aggression.

President Yoon, who has made it a key national security priority to improve cooperation with Japan, told Reuters in an interview in November it was understandable for Japan to boost its defence spending given the growing threat from North Korea's ballistic missile programme. (Reuters)

Fiji's military chief said on Friday his forces will not intervene over a national election that took place on Wednesday, after opposition leaders wrote to him raising concerns over vote-counting.

International election observers said on Friday they had not seen any significant voting irregularities, adding that an initial anomaly with the app presenting results had been rectified.

The Pacific island nation, with a population of 900,000, had a history of military coups before constitutional reform in 2013 to remove a race-based voting system that favoured indigenous Fijians over a large Indian ethnic group.

A result is expected on Sunday in a tight race between two former coup leaders, after the Fiji Elections Office conducts a final count of paper ballots.

Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama's Fiji First party was narrowly leading the final count with 38.72% of votes, ahead of Opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka's People's Alliance party on 38.45%, at 10 p.m. on Friday, with returns from 560 of 2,071 polling stations counted.

Rabuka was taken in for questioning by police on Friday evening and later released, the People's Alliance party said in a statement.

He was shown on television leaving the Criminal Investigation Division headquarters in Suva, telling reporters he hadn't been charged.

On Thursday, Rabuka's People's Alliance had written to Republic of Fiji Military Forces Commander Ro Jone Kalouniwai expressing concerns over the election process.

Kalouniwai told TV station FBC news on Friday that the military would put its trust in the electoral process and not get involved.

"I wish to reassure the people of Fiji that the RFMF (armed forces) will not respond to Rabuka's insistence or any political party, that we intervene," Kalouniwai said in a separate interview with broadcaster RNZ Pacific.

The co-chair of a Multinational Observer Group, Australian politician Rebekha Sharkie, told reporters in Suva on Friday that counting was proceeding "in a systematic, methodical and transparent manner".

Technical problems had plagued the election office's app, used by the public to track provisional results on Wednesday evening, fuelling mistrust among opposition parties.

The app had shown a People's Alliance Party candidate leading, before it was taken offline late on Wednesday. When it went back online it showed Fiji First ahead.

The election office said mistakes had been made transferring data to the app, and it was not used to count votes.

People's Alliance and four other opposition parties on Friday launched a petition calling for an independent audit and a recount, after saying they had no confidence in the election process.

Sharkie said the election office had immediately informed the Multinational Observer Group on Wednesday evening of the anomaly with the results app, and the issue was rectified.

"Updates on final results has been slower than anticipated, due to additional quality control processes," she added. (Reuters)

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday approved postponing - for the second time - a decision on whether the Afghan Taliban administration and the Myanmar junta can send a United Nations ambassador to New York.

The 193-member General Assembly approved without a vote the decision by the U.N. credentials committee, which also deferred a decision on rival claims to Libya's U.N. seat. The nine-member committee includes Russia, China and the United States.

The postponement of decisions on Myanmar, Afghanistan and Libya leaves the current envoys in place. But the credentials committee said it could "revert to consideration of these credentials at a future time in the seventy-seventh session" of the General Assembly, which ends in September next year.

Competing claims were again made for the seats of Myanmar and Afghanistan with the Taliban administration and Myanmar's junta pitted against envoys of the governments they ousted last year. U.N. acceptance of the Taliban administration or Myanmar's junta would be a step toward the international recognition sought by both.

A rival claim was also made this year for Libya's U.N. seat - currently held by the Government of National Unity in Tripoli - by a "Government of National Stability" led by Fathi Bashagha and backed by a parliament in the country's east.

The Taliban seized power in mid-August last year from the internationally recognized government. When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, the ambassador of the government they toppled remained the U.N. envoy after the credentials committee deferred its decision on the seat.

Myanmar's junta seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government in February last year. (reuters)