Politics in Malaysia, which have been choppy since the March 8 general election, have plunged into further turmoil after new charges of sodomy were brought against ‘prime minister-in-waiting’ Anwar Ibrahim.

A similar charge in 1998 saw Anwar - then deputy prime minister - land in jail for six years before the country's highest court acquitted him of the charges. By then, his meteoric political career had crumbled.

Having climbed back from oblivion, promising Malaysians a "new Malaysia", and again within a whisker of the top job, Anwar is again faced with the same curse that felled him a decade ago.