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Anwar Ibrahim's Specialist and Malay Unity Talks

UMNO and PAS would meet next week for talks on Malay unity. Coincidentally, after stonewalling Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's request for a German endoscopic specialist to examine, he is suddenly told he could "on compassionate grounds". The stumbling block in any serious talks about Malay unity is the treatment UMNO and the government metes out to the expelled and dismissed former deputy prime minister. The Prime Minister, in private, does not regard the National Justice Party (KeADILan) as a genuine Malay party, since it welcomes non-Malays into its fold. In any case, he does not want KeADILan around; certainly not its icon, whose political stature increases with every day he spends in prison.

Dato' Seri Anwar's request is allowed to lend respectability to the talks. But the conditions it imposes is inexplicable. The Hospital Kuala Lumpur director, Dr Abdul Razak Kechik, puts five conditions: that the German specialist come within 14 days, that Dato' Seri Anwar pays for the treatment and operation at the hospital, that he meets all expenses himself, that he is solely responsible for anything that may go wrong, that HKL specialist will witness all procedures undertaken. When you undergo treatment in the Hospital Kuala Lumpur, you sign away your rights to protest if it goes wrong. That is always the practice. Indeed, so are the others. But when then is it necessary to insist that the specialist must come within a fortnight? What happens if the man cannot make it? Would then the "compassionate grounds" go out the window when, for argument's sake, he says he is not free for a month? It is safe to assume Dato' Seri Anwar is not his only client, and he has commitments in Germany that must be met. So, why this pressure?

One reason why permission is granted now is to make the Malay Unity talks not stumble over how he is treated. But it would not. Dato' Seri Anwar had fought a long battle with the authorities for the right to have a specialist of his choice. There was no suggestion that no one but he would pay for him to come. But the government had refused. Indeed, plans are afoot for him to be sent back to Sungei Buloh prison from his present ward at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur. Suggestions that he was faking his illness was made. Dato' Abdul Razak would have agreed to have him returned to his cell despite the extreme pain he is subjected to. Why did the good doctor agree to have him sent back for what he now says he cannot be on compassionate grounds?

But he gets the medical treatment he seeks, but no thanks to the hospital and government authorities. It is this UMNO attempt to recover lost Malay ground that ensures he wins a small victory. But that alone would not save UMNO and the UMNO-PAS talks. The Prime Minister's belief in excluding KeADILan from the talks under any circumstances -- after KeADILan refused to take part -- throws a racial exclusiveness into the talks that could redound on PAS. PAS gamely tells the world it would widen the scope of the talks, but can it? It does not have the wherewithal to control the talks, and it is the UMNO worldview that would get an airing. Already, it has sent shivers down the spine of the fledgling opposition front, especially with suggestions that many in PAS, while committed to having Dato' Seri Anwar released from prison nevertheless is worried about what he represents when he is free. In other words, the fear remains that Dato' Seri Anwar could be persuaded to return to UMNO and be its next leader. It seems far-fetched now but both UMNO and PAS would not want it: UMNO because Anwar returning could sideline its current leaders, and PAS because Anwar could keep them even longer in the Opposition.

UMNO's call for Malay unity in a multiracial Malaysia links it to Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party in Queensland. It seeks through this Malay unity talks a racial exclusivity that One Nation Party wants in Australia. The circumstances are different, the worldviews dissimilar but the aim is the same. The bottom line for both views is to discard the foreigner in their midst. It is an argument similar to those opposed to universal human rights: there is little difference between the worldview of the Talibans who stone a mother of seven to death for adultery before an ecstatic crowd of men and children, and Florida frying condemned men in a faulty electric chair: both defend their position by demanding that they be left alone to do what they must, that universal rules should not apply to them. There is a world of difference between the Taliban and Florida, but the principle is the same. As it is between UMNO and One Nation.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my