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DEWAN DISPATCHES: Anwar Ibrahim goes for broke in his high stakes political poker game

by: Azmi Anshar
DEWAN RAKYAT July 17, 2008

The second meeting of the first term of the 12th Parliament, which finished today, didn’t waltz through like it always did in previous meetings of yonder years, give and take a few missteps, when the Barisan Nasional held the House on a domineering two-thirds majority. Under-represented, the Opposition – if they could be characterised as one – had to hustle and scrape just to make their presence felt. How the scenario has now drastically morphed.

Instead, from the time this current meeting started on June 23, the House jazzed, rapped, rocked but almost didn’t steadied, a cumbersome anchor sinking tightly to its legs to coerce a lopsided gait. Call it the House of Cards built precariously on the furious tempo of a high stake, no-limit political poker game. At the current bet, the action is on the tremulous BN majority to raise tremendously the ante that rode on the sensational arrest of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim yesterday.

As insurance, the BN 140-82 majority had injected “add-ons” – buying more chips before they get busted to rebuy themselves into this poker game while holding a perceived weak hand of deuces against the seemingly diamond flush of the Pakatan Rakyat. The appeasement of Sabah MPs the other month with extraordinary funding and promises of better representation was a crucial “add-on” after the Sabahans diced with the idea of shifting loyalties to the other galvanised political divide.

And so goes the BN strategy of trying to outfox and out-bet the Pakatan Rakyat in the national political casino that sometimes doubles up as the People’s Hall. Inevitably, the players who win are always players with the toughest nerve, the dullest poker face and the unchecked guts to bluff their way and deceive opponents into thinking they have lost. Victory on a losing hand is very satisfying but the bragging rights soon after are also intoxicating. But in big-time poker, just like in big-time politics, nothing is what it seems, everything is to play for and nobody wins until the one player goes for broke and bets everything on the table.

After he was released on police bail this morning, Anwar counter-attacked strongly with allegations that he was the victim of a “vendetta”, claiming that his arrest was designed to destroy his ambitions of seizing power. The way he was arrested also evoked a sense of déjà vu – a big team of police officers, balaclava-wearing cops carrying automatic weapons, a sodomy charge (though no charge of corruption since Anwar is not in Government) and thousands of supporters willing to be water-cannoned, tear-gassed, bludgeoned and dragged into jail for his sake.

Anwar’s outrage was a piece of his classic counter-provocations: “Dumped in a cell to sleep on a cold cement floor with nothing...that has exacerbated the (back) pain,” he told an earlier Press conference. “I don’t deserve this. No Malaysian deserves this. Why treat me like a major criminal? They have seen all my private parts. Of course I refused to be photographed; it could be on YouTube very soon!"

What about this subtle inveighing of police serving the Section 111 Criminal Procedure Code notice: Police had demanded Anwar’s presence at Federal Territory police headquarters at 2pm Monday but they however served him on Sunday an ex-parte court order prohibiting him from physically being within 5 km from Parliament on Monday. “My house and the police HQ are within 5 km radius from Parliament building. The court order effectively put me under house arrest on Monday and at the same time prevented me from going to the police headquarters!”

Anwar stoutly defended his decision NOT to give a DNA sample during his medical examination last night at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital, claiming that fabricated DNA evidence had been used against him at his turbulent sexual misconduct/power abuse trials in the late 1990s.

However, Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar refused to absorb Anwar’s punches staggering like a punch-drunk boxer, opting to parry all punches and counterpunch with raking efficacy and defend every police action that was deployed. In his rendezvous with reporters at the Parliament lobby, the Minister insisted that police made the arrest by the book, including pre-empting the 2pm deadline that Anwar should report to police by an hour, to “avoid any untoward incident.”

Syed Hamid pointed to police’s bad experience when they tried to serve him a Section 111 Criminal Procedure Code notice last Sunday, prevented from doing so by Anwar’s battery of bodyguards. “If police forced themselves, there will an incident again and the Government will be blamed. When we left the notice to his security guards, they (the lawyers) used the technical excuse that the notice must be served personally to him. So how do you avoid being involved in a scuffle and unruly behaviour?” went Syed Hamid’s entreaty.

Syed Hamid alluded to the fact that Anwar’s blanket security included a seven-vehicle convoy every time he went for an outing. “He was very well protected. By doing what the police did, they avoided a scuffle. Anwar cooperated very well and we are satisfied with that.”

Here’s an interesting Syed Hamid denial: he denied knowledge of balaclava clad plain clothes policemen being deployed to arrest Anwar, contending that uniformed officers made the arrest. Citing that every possible convenience was afforded to Anwar, from medication to praying time, Syed Hamid conceded that Anwar was within his right to decline giving a voluntary DNA sample. “We cannot force a person for his DNA because under our law, if you want to take any intimate sample, you require consent from the person. Since we did not get his consent, so we did not proceed and he was brought back to his lock-up.”

However, Syed Hamid strongly felt that Anwar should had just submitted his DNA sample if “truth is what he seeks to establish”. Anwar retorted that the authorities still kept samples of his DNA from his previous trial if they desperately wanted a small piece of him. In a related House development, Syed Hamid was relieved that the long-awaited proposed DNA Identification Act was not tabled in the current meeting, convinced that if the Government had done so, the Opposition would have made a meal out of questioning the “dark motives” behind the political ramifications of the Act.

Syed Hamid did at least take a political dig on Anwar. “Unfortunately, instead of upholding the truth, Anwar turned the sodomy report against him into a political motivated incident. Everybody has registered in their minds that it is a political thing. I think politics have to be fought politically; we cannot use the law and order to fight politics. As far as the government is concerned, the last thing we are going to do is to put him in trouble because he is a possible candidate for Prime Minister.”

Demurring against Anwar’s claim that the sodomy charge was fully fabricated, Syed Hamid argued the government's responsibility to ensure that public interest like the sodomy complaint as serious. “Otherwise, the complainant will feel that we have given preferential treatment just because of the personality. This is what we want to avoid.” Syed Hamid also shot down any theory of conspiracy. "If there is going to be a charge, the police must be satisfied with the investigation and the Attorney-General Office must be satisfied that it is a prima facie case. So it is at the investigation stage to establish criminality."

Would the Anwar arrest, sparking yesterday ugly scenes of verbal whiplash across both sides of the political gorge in the House, be the moment that distinguishes the BN or PR, or both, as going for broke? As it stands now, the pivot on public opinion and outrage seems to be tipping towards Anwar and even if he has broken his bank, all he will lose is his liberty and perhaps the chance to contest a by-election while his loose coalition will be further entrenched in the political psyche.

However, for the BN to go for broke is a messy picture: losing means setting an alarming chain reaction where backing from traditional states like Sabah may slip to force the pendulum to swing to PR, breaking the decades-old dominant hold on the Federal Government or, to avoid a total collapse, force a snap general election, the odds worst than prior to March 8. But these are calculated conjectures plainly propagated by the political punditry and their ecosystem of probable outcomes.

Let’s switch the gambling metaphor into adducing out-of-this-world odds: Anwar may still be wily enough to endure the last throw of the dice by rendering himself as the ultimate sacrificial lamb – his likely indictment, torrid trial and virtual incarceration, if that’s what the authorities crave for, in return for a spanking new Pakatan Rakyat Federal Government. Anwar would come to terms that he won’t be Prime Minister as much as he would love to, but if the wife was to lead the coalition to an overpowering victory and geared to become PM, anything’s possible.

What are the odds the bookmakers will offer this outlandish outcome as the final result? 100-to-1? 1,000-to-1? 10,000-to-1? It’s heady days again in the land of hazardous political wagers.