KUALA LUMPUR     -           Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s perennial opposition leader, has often been on the cusp of power but age is catching up with him and Saturday’s election could be his last chance to win the top job. The 75-year-old, whose political career spans four decades and includes two prison stints, is optimistic his Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) coalition can finally win enough seats to form a government and replace the graft-tainted ruling party. So long the runner-up of Malaysian politics, Anwar could be running out of time to achieve his long-held but elusive ambition of leading the Southeast Asian nation. “This is Anwar’s last election. If he fails to get the support to become PM, there will be expectations that he should step aside,” Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham Malaysia told AFP. “If he chooses to stay on, this will only serve to weaken the opposition further and fragment it. There are other leaders ready to lead.” Anwar was a firebrand Muslim youth leader when he was recruited in 1982 into the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the main political party that ruled Malaysia for more than 60 years. His star rose meteorically, with the suave young politician becoming finance minister and then deputy prime minister in the early 1990s under former premier Mahathir Mohamad, a youthful counterbalance to the political veteran. The pairing, considered one of the most dynamic duos in Southeast Asian politics at the time, soon unravelled. Tensions came to head during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, when they had a bitter falling out over how to handle the debacle. Some observers say Anwar had been too impatient to become prime minister, slighting his patron. Mahathir sacked Anwar, who was also expelled from UMNO and charged with corruption and sodomy, the latter a crime in the largely Islamic nation.