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David Anwar Lobs A Catapault At Goliath Mahathir

Beneath the surface calmness of Malaysian politics rages an unacknowledged but uncontrollable fire: a vendetta that ensures Malaysian politics would never be the same again. The protagonists were once as close as father and son, but today one would love the other to be damned to perdition. The casual visitor and even the long-time resident can only guess, if at all, that much is amiss. The newspapers are of no help. Sycophancy ensures its irrelevance. The best information these days come from the alternate papers, in which Harakah, the PAS organ, is the best read and the most reliable. Amidst this is the David-and-Goliath struggle for the heart of Malaysia led by He Who Thinks He Is Lord Of All He Surveys and He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. Both are invisible these days: one hidden behind a phalanx of security detail and tighter police protection and living in grandeur in a palace that threatens to fall over his head; the other in a cold cell in the hitech Sungei Buloh prison plotting to break out of it; both appear in public when they are required to, one to address foreigners who could help him out of his predicament, the other in court in hope justice could spring him out of his. It is difficult, at this stage, to say who is prisoner and who the free man. But their futures are inexplicably bonded to each other in a struggle in which there can be only one winner.

Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim deflects every attempt by his former mentor, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, to destroy him politically, morally, personally. The vendetta is made all the more vicious, and Dr Mahathir all the more nervous, because every official attempt to destroy Dato' Seri Anwar backfired. The young man fights back with maximum calculated damage. He is now jailed for six years for corruption but not more his trial exposed the utter unprofessional behaviour of the instruments of power and governance: the police, the Attorney-General's chambers, the judiciary, the civil service. The sodomy trial now under way is mired in a procedural quagmire. The strained attempt, during the recent UMNO general assembly, to damn the Anwar cronies simply because the overkill ensured it would be disbelieved. The Anwar riposte was to demand a list of the Mahathir cronies, yet to be produced. Dato' Seri Anwar last Friday forced the Prime Minister yet again into the corner he has become accustomed to. He lodged a police report accusing him, the Attorney-General, and Dato' Abdul Gani Patail, a deputy public prosecutor for failing to press charges against a senior member of the Malaysian cabinet. The Harakah, the PAS newspaper, in this morning's edition named the minister for international trade and industry, Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz, as the minister involved.

The Prime Minister meets every accusation by further public relations pronouncements on how well the country does. The newspapers are replete with news of matters of no import. The cabinet and government lives in the clouds, unwilling to come down to earth. It is left to the Prime Minister alone to challenge a spontaneous ground swell of questioning crowds for which none dares give answers. Attempts to divert public attention by harping on opposition shortcomings fail because they are not followed through. Ministers make stupid statements that redound on the government's credibility. The minister of information, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob's silly statement about no air time for opposition parties is typical of what comes out of the mouths of cabinet ministers these days. When they decide to open their mouths. When issues of import are raised they are ignored; instead, the government usually accuse the questioners of being ungrateful. But the latest Anwar complaint is serious: he has alleged the Prime Minister, the Attorney-General, Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah, and DPP Dato' Abdul Gani Patail of perverting the course of justice; they had prima facie evidence against the minister, whom Harakah identifies as Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz, on five counts of corruption. "The charges were not preferred due to the intervention of the Prime Minister and as a result ... (the minister) has not been prosecuted," he said in the statement. He said the Prime Minister reprimanded him when he tried to change the latter's decision to halt the corruption case. Dato' Seri Anwar responds with every action against him with a believable, provable accusation against a named individual close to the Prime Minister, with the impact of a tightening noose. How would Goliath respond?

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