Anwar recounted the party’s early struggles, highlighting that during his imprisonment in 1998, his wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, took over the party’s leadership without any claims of it being nepotism.

“People will say that my wife and daughter are in the party. That may be true but when we were fighting (in 1998), there wasn’t even a congress.

“When I went to jail, Wan Azizah took over. At that time, nepotism wasn’t an issue,” Anwar said in his winding-up speech at the party’s national congress here.

He also expressed gratitude to Wan Azizah for leading the party through a difficult period.

“I want to raise this matter so that members don’t get caught up in such accusations (against Nurul Izzah),” he said.

Anwar added that while he had chosen Wan Azizah to lead the party during his incarceration, Nurul Izzah’s rise came through party elections, reflecting the will of the members.

“With Wan Azizah, yes, I chose her at that time. But Nurul Izzah was chosen by the members,” he said.

At the party’s central leadership polls yesterday, Nurul Izzah was elected as the new PKR deputy president after she garnered 9,803 votes to defeat the incumbent, Rafizi Ramli, who obtained only 3,866 votes.

Rafizi and Nurul Izzah were engaged in a straight fight for the deputy presidency – a position Rafizi won in the 2022 party elections in another one-to-one contest against Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.

After she announced her candidacy for the post, Nurul Izzah was seen as the frontrunner, with over 200 out of PKR’s 222 divisions expressing their support.

Rafizi previously said that he would resign as economy minister if he lost to Nurul Izzah.