On the eve of Nomination Day, Nurul Izzah Anwar, the PKR parliamentary candidate for Lembah Pantai, reflected on how much she was a figure tossed on the rapids of history and how much her candidacy was due to self-propulsion.

nurul izzah interview 220307 firm Understandably, this 27-year-old eldest child of reformasi icon Anwar Ibrahim, found it difficult, in the rush of eleventh hour preparations for her electoral campaign, to attain a zone of visibility as far as the past was concerned.

Nine years ago, Nurul was preparing to go off to Petronas University in Tronoh, Perak for a course in engineering when history bore down on her - her father, the deputy prime minister, was sacked and dragged through a legal and political maelstrom whose reverberations are still being felt.

Of a sudden a pre-university student on the threshold of entry into the world of academic theory was catapulted into the university of hard knocks where you learn from a succession of experiences.

nurul izzah anwar engineer activist politician 040407 “It was hard for me to make much sense of things as they happened,” she said in an interview with Malaysiakini before hurrying off to a meeting with campaign aides.

“All I had to steer me were the words of my father ‘I’ve been wronged and I must fight it’,” she recalled of the turbulent days in September 1998 when Anwar found himself toppled from prime minister-in-waiting to accused object of infamy.

Her studies put on hold

In the immediate aftermath of Anwar’s incarceration, Nurul was transformed by the movement for political reformation that the crisis spawned from anonymity to region-wide symbol of change.

“A year before in conversations over dinner when he was acting prime minister, he used to admonish us - his children - about not being greedy. My father speaks in formal Malay when he is passionate about something and it is not easy to interrupt him and ask for details.

“You have to catch the drift of what he’s saying and try to understand what’s troubling him. It is not the time to ask him for more background. He works hard and has little time for small talk but he does say things that you have to catch in the flow of his conversation,” said Nurul.

nurul izzah educational milestone 030407 Nurul subsequently put her studies on hold and campaigned the length and breadth of the country and also went abroad to garner moral support for her father. There was no gestation period for her entry into politics; she was plunged headlong into the fray.

“It was an induction of fire and I had to learn as I went along,” she said. “There was little time to reflect and still less time to see where things were headed.”

A couple of years later, when Anwar lost all his legal battles and was clapped in jail in Sungai Buloh, Nurul resumed her studies, graduated and settled into marriage before taking a Masters in international relations at John Hopkins University in the United States.

Was convinced last week

She returned last year to become an aide to her father who after his release from jail in August 2004 went to Georgetown University in Washington for a round of lectureships before returning to Malaysia to lead PKR in a renewed battle for political change.

lembah pantai parliamentary seat election results 110208 Nurul was content to stay in the shadows and have a baby who was born last September. “I was not interested to stand as a candidate though my name has been bandied about as a candidate from the last elections in 2004.”

Last week a coterie of her father’s friends, aides and supporters, all above the half century mark in age, approached to persuade her to stand in Lembah Pantai, saying that times and conditions were ripe for her entry into the electoral arena.

“They said the days of my symbolic value were over and the time for a substantive presence in the movement for political change had arrived.

“Despite my desire to be with my baby, I felt the same promptings that impelled me to help my father nine years ago. I felt I had to go with the flow and here I am ready to open up another chapter in my life,” she said before hurrying off to a meeting with her aides.

shahrizat abdul jalil Nurul will will take on Barisan Nasional's three-term incumbent Shahrizat Abdul Jalil ( right ) for the Lembah Pantai seat.

She will face an uphill task to dislodge the Women, Family and Community Development minister and Wanita Umno deputy chief.

Shahrizat has previously beaten former lord president Salleh Abas, who ran under the Semangat 46 banner in 1995.

Four years later, she was victorious again against PKR candidate Zainur Zakaria, a high-profile lawyer.

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