MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The politics of Anwar Ibrahim's health

DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM faces imminent paralysis, neurological, kidney and urinary failure, and, God forbid, sudden death. This is the medical diagnosis. But how and if the jailed former deputy prime minister is treated depends on politics, not medicine. That he is in this state is not his doing. An existing spinal injury kept in check is worsened when, after his arrest on 20 September 1998, when the then inspector-general of police, Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor, attacks him, blindfolded, manacled and trussed up, with karate chops that brought him to an inch of his life. He was denied, as it became known later, medical treatment for a few days, when he was left as he was after the attack.

A few days later, his wife, Datin Seri Wan Aziz Wan Ismail, was assured that he is well looked after. He was not. It took a Royal Commission to ferret this out, Tan Sri Rahim was convicted and jailed. The National Front (BN) government did not expect this to come out. But it did not flinch. It went ahead and convicted him on unsound and unfounded charges of corruption and sodomy, denying him the defendant's legal right to rebut the charges, and sentenced him to six years on one and nine years on the other. The appeal courts have deliberately delayed his appeals, threatened his lawyers, committing two for contempt of court.

It sent the frightening message to the world that in Malaysia anyone who challenged the prime minister or the BN coalition he heads, be he politician, businessman, citizen, foreign or local, should expect short shrift at the courts. For as the years go by, it was Dato' Seri Anwar's challenge of the then prime minister, Tun (then Dato' Seri) Mahathir Mohamed, that landed him in Sungei Buloh and as a near paraplegic. All else is spin. The government insists he is a common criminal. He is not, although the courts convicted him. He is convicted not for his alleged crimes but for his politics.

The government knows it. He knows it. With each passing day, more Malaysians know it. How he was sacked, how he was arrested, how he was beaten, how he was convicted, how an UMNO conspiracy continue to insist he is all he is convicted for, no more no less questions Malaysian norms of justice than his guilt. But the government insists he is a criminal. He will be treated as one. But it is not so easy. The BN and UMNO insisted he is history, he is an irrelevance, he does not have a constituency outside. But they know how false these claims are. They repeat this mantra more to convince themselves than the world at large. They are disbelieved.

Dato' Seri Anwar's medical condition went from bad to worse, aggravated by the grievous assault in custody. Paralysis is threatened, which could be mollified by surgery. He wanted microsurgery by a pioneering German orthopaedic surgon and asked the government for permission to have it done at his clinic in Munich, for which he would meet all expenses. The government insisted it must be done locally and by open surgery. He persisted. The then health minister, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, rejected it in a statement to Parliament. From then on, how he is treated became a political, not a medical, issue.

The positions hardened. When the government realised it, it offered a midway solution: The surgeon, Dr Thomas Hoogland, was allowed to examine Dato' Seri Anwar in Malaysia, and could perform the operation in the country. He came, and decided it could not be done here, and refused. Dato' Seri Anwar's medical condition worsened, but he would not be admitted to hospital, and the medical treatment available to him was at best rudimentary.

Each held their ground. Neither could now back down, for the one who does has lost the political ground. The health minister, Dato' Chua Soi Lek, said the government position is unchanged. And twice compounded the political nature of Dato' Seri Anwar's treatment. Once a political decision is made, the civil servants would not second guess it. In fact, in this confrontation, every effort was made to suggest that he does not deserve what he gets. He cannot, for instance, get his medical records for a second opinion; it somehow got mislaid. But it was available to the health minister to deny him permission to seek treatment overseas.

The issue is not if Dato' Seri Anwar could be treated in Malaysia but if he believes, even if he decides on surgery here, he can go under anaesthetic and come out of it alive. It does not matter if he would, or that the Hippocratic oath would inhibit doctors from breaching it. But if the man facing surgery does not believe it – and that comes from his personal experiences with the hospitals and the government that runs it – he cannot be faulted for refusing it.

This is why the argument that he casts a slur on Malaysian doctors to think he could die for reasons other than fate is pointless. If the patient has no confidence in his doctors, now matter how good or competent he is, he should have the right to seek one of his choice. That he is a prisoner is not an issue in his circumstance. The government panicked when it confronted the political consequences of what happens to him.

That it comes amidst the UMNO elections frightens the prime minister more than he would admit. If its worst fears about Dato' Seri Anwar is confirmed, and it happens before 23 September 2004, when the elections are due, it could rouse the delegates to give a stinging rebuke to the now annointed UMNO president.

Which is why behind-the-scene an attempt is made to bring forward the general assembly to August. The official reason is to restrict the Gua Musang MP, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah's chances of campaigning should he be in the ballot to be president. That is a canard. Dato' Seri Anwar's inclemental health is why. But changing it is as difficult for this entails massive rescheduling of appointments and travels by UMNO leaders, who would attend the general assembly with fear and fright in their hearts about the state of health of the prisoner in Sungei Buloh.

The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who inherited this political hot potato, would not address it. He insists it is not his baby but Dr Mahathir's. He is wrong. He, not the good doctor, must decide. So far, he evades it. When he could decide, he did nothing. When one KeADILan leader saw him for permission for Dato' Seri Anwar to seek surgery overseas, he invited the man instead to return to UMNO. When another made the same request in the second week of July, he promised to reconsider. In other words, he would not decide.

It is no use accusing Dato' Seri Anwar of politicising his medical condition, as BN and UMNO leaders insist he has. When the government is unwilling to look at his medical condition medically, he had no other choice. He hoped the government would respond in kind. He knew the odds, what would happen to him, that he could be martyred, accepted the risks. It is this stoic offensive that unnerves the government. His public demeanour may not be his private, or his family's, feelings. It does not matter. If he would not to flinch in calamity or catastrophe, what can Pak Lah do but hope it would not happen.

The BN government did not think through its plan to consign Dato' Seri Anwar to the political dungheap, it made plans and policy to contain him on the run, and then not to contain Dato' Seri Anwar but to spread the blame amongst the BN partners, when a matter of life and death faced him, it is the BN and UMNO that cannot accept it, not Dato' Seri Anwar nor his family. It is this reversal that frightens the government more than anything else. It has blinked several times. It cannot one more time. That is the BN's, UMNO's, and Pak Lah's, most frightening nightmare, one neither can resolve.

[This is my column in the latest issue of Seruan Keadilan, the official organ of KeADILan, the National Justice Party, and out today, 26 July 2004]

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