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The Anwar affair divides Malaysia as ever

THE COURT OF APPEAL DID what it must. The injustice must be allowed to fester. The man in the centre of the storm, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, did what he must. The judicial system is injustice personified. Nothing changed therefore when Dato' Seri Anwar is denied bail and his conviction for sodomy dismissed. Take a step back and view what happened at the Court of Appeal yesterday (21 January 2004), and notice that nothing unusual happened. Each side stuck to its guns. It proved conclusively that as long as the Anwar affair is not resolved politically, every non-political move is mere drama, an opiate for those who do not want to resolve it politically. For at the root of this affair is the deep divisions within the Malay community over it. This cannot be repaired until the Anwar issue is put to rest once and for all.

Could it when the political divide has all but destroyed the state, with neither willing to give way, or even attempt a compromise? Neither talks to the other. It does not matter now if Dato' Seri Anwar is guilty of the charges against him. The prosecution handled their case so ineptly, and the judges eschewing judicial principles to convict not just the prisoner but his lawyers for daring to defend him as they must, that whatever the final judgement is, this doubt that he is framed for an out-of-turn bid for power and not for why he is in Sungei Buloh prison. What must worry the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is that the Malay community is more divided now than at the time of the arrest, and the reformasi demonstrations. Giving him bail now would only break ranks when it cannot afford to.

What gives him a respite is that both sides confront with no plan in mind but for one to ensure Dato' Seri Anwar must remain in jail at any cost and for the other that he must not. There never was an attempt, in the five years since this confrontation, to put the other view across. This would eventually cost the National Front (BN) dear. For its own case is flawed by its inability to put it in a frame which states clearly that he is in jail for what he is convicted of. It is too late for that now. The Anwaristas' perception is to have him out on bail at any cost. But this overriding desire to free him clouds the strategic perception of what must be done, and often decided on the run. Normally, this ineptness on both sides would have brought this to a stalemate.

That it has not is what keeps it boiling. The only man in this sordid affair who thinks through is Dato' Seri Anwar. He has much to answer for, for his role in government as he rose through the ranks to deputy prime minister in 15 years, but all that is forgotten in the five years since his sacking, jailing and humiliation. He has risen above the twaddly campaign against him to stay above the fray, and into a man wronged. He has survived five years of this, gradually reworking his role into a Malaysian icon. This caught the BN government flatfooted. Every move to keep him in jail enhanced his cause. When any attempt to speak on his behalf in public is ruthlessly put down, it gives an impression that the Government is nervous of the truth, whatever it is.

It divides the Malays and, latterly, Malaysians. It is the most serious crisis ever facing the Government. The May 13 1969 racial riots was, as new evidence emerges, a catharctic but deliberate act by the UMNO-led government of the day to ensure the Chinese role in government is forever limited. The communist insurgency was a colonial legacy in which, after Independence in 1957, the political battle lines were clearly drawn: the Malay nationalists against the Chinese communists. Neither had the country been so divided as the Anwar affair has. It is a multiracial belief that he is wronged, and the justified fear that if a deputy prime minister can be so grossly treated, what hope then for a Malaysian caught in this Kafkaesque dilemma that Dato' Seri Anwar is in.

That the Government is nervous is clear. It cannot afford a verdict it disagrees with. But that this manipulation now worries the more rational, especially Malay, minds in the judiciary is why the government's case is so badly handled. They insist that if justice must be upheld, let the accused get the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, that he be extended all courtesies while he undergoes trial, and bail pending appeals if that is provided for. Several do not want to be part of this political charade. Which is why the composition of the judges in the Anwar cases is as they are. This is not only in the judiciary. One political secretary wants to quit for his role in the former deputy prime minister's political and physical destruction: his conscience pricks him, and which would not ease if he remains in a government that deliberately ate one of its own for no rhyme or reason but that he posed a threat to the Prime Minister of the day.

One practical effect of the Court of Appeal decision yesterday is political. The first test of the Anwar affair was in 1999, when the BN government lost ground, and Trengganu because of it. The 2004 General Election is another, the more stronger than 1999, of the Anwar enigma. Dato' Seri Anwar has had five years to prepare for it. His case has unnerved the Establishment as nothing has in 50 years. When PAS met the ambassadors recently to explain its Islamic State Document, the moderator was a solid figure of the Establishment, a well-regarded Malaysian ambassador who was once seconded to the Istana Negara at the request of the then Yang Dipertuan Agung. Defections like these are common place. The former Lord President (chief justice) is a member of the PAS-run state executive council. A former armed forces chief is an active member of PAS, as are retired secretaries-general of federal ministries. The political divide continues unabated.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com