It has become too much like a recurring bad movie Malaysians are being forced to watch all over again. Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim being caught out for a personal indiscretion yet again and convicted for what, fortunately or unfortunately, remains a crime under Malaysian statutes. Had the victim being a young woman rather than a man and the case not labelled “politically-motivated” simply because the guilty party happens to be a prominent political figure, this case would have been treated with the opprobrium it deserves as one of a powerful employer getting his way inappropriately with a perhaps awed and defenceless employee.
Instead, another international campaign seems under way and Anwar’s family members dragged out again to do the father’s dirty bidding, seeking to project anew the opposition leader as the victim instead, as usual of a vindictive government bent on neutralising a political threat with “trumped-up” charges.
As in previous similar situations, Anwar suddenly faces “life-threatening” health issues that local medical specialists supposedly cannot handle. The campaign, then as now, is clearly to draw international attention to Anwar’s personal predicament in hopes of generating such widespread sympathy that the government will be pressured to spring him out of jail, preferably so he can travel abroad.
The campaign shows clear signs of flagging. Perhaps the international community, like growing numbers of Malaysians, has grown tired of this unending charade.
The United States, for one, has grown wiser from the time when then visiting vice-president Al Gore spoke out loudly for Anwar’s reformasi battle cry and saw his high-profile intervention backfire as a rather crude case of US interference, bullying even, in our domestic political discourse.
This time around, visiting US President Barack Obama has been scrupulous in not wanting to wade into a reprise of Anwar’s continuing political drama.
Malaysians should be grateful that perhaps the US and the international community are finally beginning to see through Anwar’s machinations for what they are: the utterly selfish refusal to contemplate reformasi of a personal proclivity that has already done untold damage and pain to his family and the nation at large.
Indeed, rather perversely, Anwar may have since calculated that a reckless disregard for the ill consequences of his personal misbehaviour has only done him and his political fortunes a world of good, allowing him to keep projecting himself as a political martyr who bravely endured personal humiliations on account of his political principles.
But what exactly are those principles? Of course, he has since expressed regret for having espoused certain principles while in Umno and at the highest echelons of government, and now espouses diametrically opposed principles after having been dismissed from both government and Umno.
In the desperation of some Malaysians, they seem prepared to invest quite a lot of blind faith in Anwar’s ability to talk the agreeable talk. Perhaps there is something to be said for a politician making a virtue out of political expediency but that surely, is rather poor qualifications for a leader of an opposition alliance untested for national power but promising everything that the ruling government is not, when it can actually mean more of the same or worse?
Perpetually surviving on a wing and perhaps a prayer on a slippery slope may cause the opposition to slip even more badly than it already has. Has Anwar already slipped by hoisting his own daughter onto the tricky minefield of Philippine politics as part of his revived campaign for worldwide sympathy?
Perhaps Anwar thought he could find inspiration from his old and equally disgraced friend, the former Philippine president Joseph Estrada, who overcame political impeachment and conviction for massive corruption to, given Philippine politics being what it is, win public office once more as the incumbent mayor of Manila.
Estrada is today part of a political triumvirate that looks increasingly like a rogues gallery in opposition to President Benigno Aquino III’s government. The other two are the current Vice-President Jejomar Binay, recently implicated in sensational exposes of corrupt practices from his time as the long-serving mayor of Makati, and Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, just out from a year of “hospital detention” and awaiting trial for yet another massive scandal involving the misappropriation of vast sums of public funds.
It was Estrada who apparently slipped a member of the notorious Sulu sultanate into a meeting that has now landed Nurul Izzah Anwar in political hot water back home. Perhaps Estrada had thought one good turn for Anwar deserves another, for mischief-making?
The writer is a Kuching-based journalist