Anwar said the ideologically disparate PR parties were united on policy matters. — File pic
“The mood is there, the mood for change,” Anwar told British daily The Guardian in an interview published today.
And just as in a recent interview with the Financial Times, the 64-year-old Anwar’s bid in the next elections was described in The Guardian as his last chance for power.
The newspaper called Anwar “the man many Malaysians love to hate,” pointing to his two prosecutions for sodomy, and his enduring of what he describes as a long-standing smear campaign to paint him as being a chauvinist to a Zionist and anti-Muslim gay man.
The chaos during the Bersih rally on April 28 is said to have derailed Najib’s election timeline.
“I’m very optimistic that we will wrest control and make major inroads,” Anwar told The Guardian.
The Guardian report also noted that even those who did not support Anwar often backed his fight to unseat what some see as an autocratic and out-of-touch government.
Datuk Seri Najib Razak has tried hard in recent times to reverse his Barisan Nasional’s (BN) negative image, repealing controversial security laws this year and enacting new legislation to allow freedom of assembly.
But right-wing elements in Umno and the government have hampered his efforts by pushing back against his attempts at transforming the administration.
Despite a new law allowing public demonstrations, the police engaged in violent clashes with protesters during the Bersih rally on April 28, dealing Najib’s administration a bloody nose and likely changing his plans for elections said to have been set for June.
Columnist and prominent lawyer Art Harun was quoted by The Guardian as saying that Bersih had thrown “a massive spanner in the [government’s] works” as increasingly informed activists point to numerous corruption scandals and police brutality as proof that government reform was necessary.
Nurul Izzah asserts that “thousands” of dubious voters have appeared in her constituency alone.
“The electoral roll is our Achilles’ heel and their way of winning,” Anwar’s 31-year-old daughter, Nurul Izzah, told The Guardian.
“Before, it was just small instances … Now we’ve unearthed a whole pool of data.”
She claimed that, in her constituency alone, she had 10,000 voters who suddenly “appeared” on electoral lists.
Anwar, seen as the man holding together a loose pact considered disparate by some Malaysians for their divergent ideologies, told The Guardian that while PR leaders have agreed to cast aside their differences to work together, there was a broader battle among different segments of Malaysian society.
“We have discussed economic policies, social policies and religious positions, and we have come to agreements,” he said of PR.
“But there’s a big, huge internal battle among the [wider] Malaysian community between the fanatics and the extremists to petition broader, more liberal tolerance. We call ourselves liberals … [but] we must put in check, not through brute force, but through active and vibrant intellectual discourse, these [extremist] aberrations.”
Prime Minister an "underachiever", fail the acid test by voters should be given the boot and voters should be on guard so as not to be hoodwinked by candidates standing for election. "politically impotent" and called for a nationwide revolution. DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang said people had been wondering what underachiever actually means. "In our political language, it implies the country's prime minister is 'politically impotent'," he said The future of Malaysia rests with the voter and it is the responsibility of voters to be entirely honest and true in the process of casting their votes.
The failure to conform to the tenets and obligations of true democracy and the dissension and discord that is now beginning to spew is set to witness a call for leaders with the well being of the nation and its people to come forward and take over the reins of power, from the obviously inept and corrupt, to administer with truth and integrit In these difficult times,DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang contended that it was high time the prime minister and Perkasa chief Mahathir handed over the country to a person with a fighting spirit - "an inspiring person who can fight the corruption, the economic woes, the MCA anti Isalam terrorism, and other forces inimical to the country's interests".Ask the Malay what he wants GE13 to bring, and some might even say they do not know. They have been tricked into believing they have many benefits, and yet many can’t even get onto the property ladder
.Who is capable of giving the right direction to the country.For this DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang said No one knows the struggles Anwar went through and what he has to endure now. No one has to date proven the mettle he has to over come the mountain of obstacles thrown at him by Umno, Mahathir, the MSM and televisions. He faces the full might of Umno, Mahathir and the likes of Pekasa and NGOs formed just so that they can attack Anwar and PR. But one thing is for sure, Anwar has transformed the Rakyat into thinking people. He gave them the impetus to start the desperate reforms needed in this country. He gave them courage to go against the odds and the might of Umno BN. If I am an Umno member, I too will salute him because as an Umno member I would know how much energy, resources and finances are being used just to stop this one man. His believe & conviction of change in this country ruled by Umno for 52 years is possible and can be achieved has rubbed on to the Rakyat. Rakyat is now empowered and determined to bring about this transformation and re-birth of a nation that have been plundered and mismanaged beyond recognition.He gave the PR coalition partners organization and steel to drive through the walls of lies and deceit of the ruling junta. Whether you like or not, whether you are for or against him, we can't deny that this man Anwar Ibrahim has transformed the political landscape of Malaysia. He will go down in Malaysian history as Father of Transformation.
It should be that despite the plentiful resources that Malaysia has, that only right-thinking and fair minded leaders be allowed to determine the fate of all our resources and that only those with the highest good for the people be allowed to lead and serve in this country.
UMNO excels at indoctrination and lies. Malays are too scared to demand freedom of religion, which the constitution grants to all Malaysians; fearful of saying they are republicans, in case they get charged with sedition; too timid to speak out against injustice – unless their ‘periuk nasi’ is threatened.The anak tiri has nothing to lose and the more daring ones may speak out. If he is banished from the home, he can always join his illegitimate brother whom he has seen flourish because of his independence. The anak manja and the doting dad, are props for each other; they make everyone’s lives miserable.For 55 years, we have been told that we belong to a specific ethnic group – “Melayu, Cina, India dan lain-lain”, but never “Malaysian”. The age of enlightenment is here. Malays have to abandon the mindset of being a receiving community and not a community which also contributes. No one owes them a living.Last week, the former Perlis mufti Asri Zainul Abidin criticised the Muslim scholars who remained silent on injustices and the witchhunt against people who questioned royal spending: “If the behaviour and actions of royalties cannot be questioned, we are only deifying them and subjugating ourselves.”Why do Malays subjugate themselves to the elite and VVIPS of society? Why cheapen themselves with preferential treatment which only breeds complacency, incompetence, and false pride? Only meritocracy will provide the best in terms of education, jobs and opportunities.
There are some truths the Malay must confront. The syariah law as it is practised in Malaysia, fails to protect single mothers but shields the men from discharging their responsibilities. Single mothers and their children live below the poverty line. Many do not receive alimony or child maintenance after being abandoned. Children drop out of school and get sucked into anti-social behaviour.Muslim scholars are silent about this and the high percentage of Malays taking drugs, in unemployment, in jail, who have HIV/Aids, in incestuous relationships and who abandon babies.What type of mentor is a corrupt businessman? What sort of role model is a polygamous father who is seldom around? Malays need to venture beyond their comfort zone. They need to adapt, to learn and innovate in order to grasp opportunities as keenly as the anak tiri or anak haram who have nothing to lose, but is not afraid to try anything to get out of a rut.The world could be his oyster rather than the tempurung where protectionism, preferential treatment and quotas thrive. Is the Malay held back from fear of trying or does he suffer from attitude sickness?
At this stage it appears Anwar enjoys a slight edge in the sweepstakes. He has succeeded in provoking Mahathir into publicly wishing that he quits now rather than wait for electoral defeat to induce him to do so.
Mahathir’s ire has helped shift the focus to where Anwar would want it to be in the final lap to a general election – who is responsible for the lamentable state the country is in, and who is the politician who has been most prescient about its downward trajectory and the reasons for it?Of course, Mahathir would have a ready answer to the first part of the question – that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is principally responsible for the nation’s (and UMNO’s) present woes.
As an answer to the second part, Mahathir would scoff at any suggestion that Anwar could be perceptive about anything at all save, possibly, in the role of Prime Minister of Israel.
Often enough Mahathir has speculated that his former Deputy in UMNO and in government would make an ideal leader of what official parlance in this country refers to as the “Zionist entity.”
Such is the antagonism he feels for Anwar that he can only refer to him in the caustic accents of Muslim demonology.
It’s Mahathir vs AnwarAll this is prologue to the point that GE-13 is not just going to be about race, as Mahathir predicted, nor about corruption and abuse of power, as Pakatan leaders have contended.
From the alacrity with which the former Prime Minister jumped into the fray after Anwar earlier this week had hinted to the Financial Times of London that he may retire to teach if Pakatan doesn’t hit the Putrajaya jackpot at the coming polls, one thing can safely be predicted.
This is that the issue of personalities – Mahathir’s and Anwar’s and their antagonism – is going to bulk large in the final prelude to the vote. This is partly because politics as theatre is more potent when it is depicted as a conflict of personalities than as a contest of clashing visions or policies.
But wait, Mahathir is not a contender in this general election the way Anwar is – as a MP seeking re-election in Permatang Pauh and as Pakatan’s candidate to be Prime Minister should the opposition coalition emerge with a parliamentary plurality.
If it’s true what they say about an institution as being the lengthened shadow of one man, then UMNO-BN today can be described as the enlarged projection of Mahathir who built party and polity up physically and emasculated them morally.
The infelicitous term, “Mahathirism”, is being bandied about – and not just by DAP’s Lim Kit Siang whom Mahathir has chided for using it – to describe the destructive policies and practices and their malignant effects that Mahathir’s 22-year stay in power had wrought.It strains credulity to claim that the five years of Badaw as Prime Minister brought the country and its once-dominant political party, UMNO, to their present dysfunctional condition.
Badawi’s tenure was an interregnum, begun in hopeful reform and stalled by his vacillation, between the authoritarianism and corruption of the Mahathir era and current PM Najib Razak’s delusive and doomed effort at reform.
Pak Lah’s Glasnost
Mahathir finds it convenient to blame Badawi for the weakened state of the nation and of UMNO-BN, but this attempt to turn his successor as PM into a scapegoat is coded language for what he cannot publicly avow.
This is that Badawi’s brief period of ‘glasnost’ (openness) made it possible for Anwar to be freed, on appeal, from jail in 2004 and this led to a concatenation of circumstances that has now made Anwar and Pakatan contenders for rights of residence to Putrajaya.
Mahathir had expected Anwar to languish in jail for longer than the six years he eventually had to endure and, when released, to have lost traction at home or go abroad, to where, presumably, the man can hobnob with his “Jewish” and “western” friends that the former premier derides him for being a tool of.The mild glasnost that Badawi launched at the start of his administration in late 2003 led to the judiciary’s release of Anwar and though the latter went abroad, it was only to refresh and recharge for a renewed campaign of agitation and reform.
This campaign is now poised on the brink of electoral vindication, a possibility that nobody could plausibly have visualised when Anwar was first jailed in 1998 and only a few would have countenanced when he was released in 2004.
But political realities are more often the unknowable results of dynamic contingencies than the sterile rehearsal of pre-scripted outcomes.
The dice is always rolling and it’s hubris to think that you can control it. No personality can be big enough to do that and hope to succeed. Not even Mahathir.
Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin may try his best to get back into the good books of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad but it is unlikely he will succeed.
At a party event on Monday, Khairy told of how he decided to join Umno after he compared the contrasting financial policies pursued by Mahathir and Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, who was then the deputy premier and finance minister.
But who is the real traitor keeping down his own race and nation
According to Khiairy, Anwar was determined to sign away the country's economic sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund to overcome the financial crisis. Mahathir - whose massive currency speculations have been widely blamed as one of the key factors contributing to the 1997-98 Asian crisis - had snubbed IMF offers of help on the grounds that the global financial body had insisted his administration launched 'unreasonable' austerity measures.
The 36-year-old Khairy is the son-in-law of fifth prime minister Abdullah Badawi, and had been called Malaysia's youngest de-facto prime minister during Badawi's rule. The duo had angered Mahathir when they scrapped some of his mega projects including the S-shaped bridged to Singapore.
In return, Mahathir has minced no words in publicly chastising the pair, whom he has insinuated ran a corrupt and inefficient government. Mahathir too himself has been accused of endemic corruption.
"Yes, Umno party elections and GE-13 are looming. Khairy needs to butter up Mahathir but I am sure Mahathir will slam the door in his face," PKR MP for Batu Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.
"Khairy's words are very telling and it is a pity. To me, he is a shame to his Oxford education. Instead of standing on the side of what is right, he has chosen to dumb down to Mahathir's level and that doesn't anything for anybody except keep the Malay community ignorant and backwards of the reality and progress taking place in the rest of the world."
Overlooking the facts
Despite debt restructuring agency Danaharta stepping in to clean up the corporate tangle and losses caused by Tajudin in the wake of the Asian crisis, it is only recently that Prime Minister Najib Razak's government finally closed the lid on the controversial MAS bail out. Najib has agreed on a secret deal that effectively frees Tajudin from all liability, while the local agencies that the tycoon owes money to have been ordered to drop their various lawsuits against him.
Khairy too seemed to have forgotten Mahathir's notorious mega deals although during Badawi's tenure, Khairy had tried to sell off the troubled national car project Proton. He also did not mention Mahathir's 'gambling' on the world's foreign currency and tin markets that left Malaysia nursing tens of billions in losses.
Instead, Khairy chose to focus on Anwar, who was rated by foreign fund managers as the region's top Finance minister due to his adoption of corporate governance and transparency policies. Another reason why Anwar fell out of favor and was latee sacked and jailed by Mahathir was his determination to weed out corruption in BN, in particular Umno.
Vested interests come first
“The IMF will come in and ask 'what do you have?' and tell us to list Petronas so foreign investors can buy into it. Our national resources will be sold just like that,” said Khairy.
He also predicted Anwar would not be able to fulfil his promises if Pakatan came to power.
“He knows it will lead to bankruptcy, so he will not fulfil his promises. So, why would you want to vote for the opposition? It's either financial ruin or unfulfilled promises,” Khairy added.
Khairy, who is also the Rembau MP, has taken on several public debates of late - with Bersih chief Ambiga Sreenevasan and PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli.
Much had been expected of him but Khairy disappointed at both debates, resorting to party line rather than face the tough questions and issues raised.
"It has come to a stage where Umno leaders including Khairy do not bother what is the truth any more. For them, there is now only one truth - and that is Mahathir's truth. Mahathir is now Malaysia's de-facto PM as well as Umno's de-facto president. You can see how the warlords are scrambling to be in his favor," said Eddie Wong, a veteran political observer.
GE-13 or the 13th general election is now widely expected to be held some time in November after Mahathir publicly advised Najib to hold the polls this year and not wait until the expiry of the 5-year mandate which ends on April 27, 2013.
Is Anwar Ibrahim’s intimation that he may retire from the exertions of leading the Opposition in Malaysia should it fail to obtain a mandate at the general election a sympathy-winning ploy to galvanise support or frank admission that though his spirit may be willing the flesh is increasingly wan?
The other day he let drop to an interviewer from the Financial Times of London that he may “go back to teaching” if the Opposition Pakatan Rakyat does not gain a mandate at GE13.
That sounds suspiciously like the ploy beloved of Lim Kit Siang who at the approach of a general election following one in which the DAP had done poorly, would say that it was going to be his last for he is thinking of retiring whereupon the DAP would do better.
Of course, this tactic drew sardonic asides from Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister for much of the time during which the then Opposition Leader Lim deployed this ruse.
Anwar had taught at the prestigious Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, DC, for about two years after his release from jail in August 2004 and his back surgery and recuperation in Munich, Germany.
He returned to Malaysia early 2007 to begin campaigning for the 12-GE whose results – and consequent grueling demands on him – have set off a chain of events whose culmination would be if Pakatan secures a lease on Putrajaya in the coming polls.
Signs of excessive wear
Anwar, 65 next month, has not before appeared as worn and weary as he has in the last several months. The unremitting demands of leading the movement for political change in Malaysia that his 1998 sacking from government and UMNO and subsequent jailing on what is now widely regarded as trumped-up corruption and sodomy charges have worked its attrition on his reserves of energy and endurance.
The constant travel, here and abroad, the hand pumping, the brutal schedule of nine to 12 speeches most Fridays through to Sundays, the regular party meetings, the frequent court appearances on charges ranging from reprobate sex to risqué hand signals, are taking its toll.
The noticeably limp handshake, the constraints on locomotion caused by lingering back pain, the increasingly ashen-faced exterior, and the diminishment in the range of his vocals on the stump caused, no doubt, by the demands of a taxing speaking schedule – are all evident signs of excessive wear.
When this is compounded by the sandpapering quality of recurrent legal trammels placed his way by Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, immersion in an academic idyll must seem like refreshing balm for battered spirits.
One is reminded of what Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos intimated to jailed rival Benigno Aquino during a tete-a-tete while exploring terms for the latter’s exile to the United States: “Sometimes I envy you – in jail you can be with your Plato, while here I have to talk to all these jokers.”
Sequestration in academia, even one, as was the case with Aquino with barred windows, can sometimes seem preferable to being borne along by those endless billows that are the lot of Southeast Asian politicians (Anwar and Aung San Suu Kyi come to mind) striving to weld a mélange of forces to dislodge long established authoritarian and corrupt regimes.
Turned to stone
Though it’s true that as Shakespeare, whose entire works Anwar read in six years in jail (1998-2004), said, “The labour we delight in physics pain,” and despite the large crowds he draws being an elixir to a populist politician like him, Anwar has wearied. “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart,” mused the poet WB Yeats.
Something of what Yeats felt about the effects on the Irish psyche of prolonged suffering under British rule is perhaps discernible in Anwar these days – the foisting of a deep, no-affect carapace on him that’s running on auto rather than is willed.
This has rendered him wan more than witless though the latter effect is detectable in the wilting of his humour on the hustings, hitherto a captivating aspect of his oratorical mien.
Where once his jokes on the stump were delivered with brio, they are now uttered without the élan that is vital for connecting with his audience.
These are losses due to the fatigue of a marathoner but this is of course restorable through rest.
But what would not be curable would be if he has lost the popular leader’s supreme qualifications which are that of being able to mingle easily with followers and adversaries, to rise and fall to the level of their intelligences, to discuss and argue without rancor, to dwell on the same themes in different forms, and to get animated without end in the face of the same goal.
When these strengths have waned, he can retreat to the academic or, even, memoir-penning redoubts. Until then there are reform promises to keep and miles to go before these can safely be said to have been fulfilledThe consequences of playing dirty and getting caught at it is starting to seriously hurt MCA president Chua Soi Lek.Not only has his party banned him from further debates with Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, he is bound to feel further heat from being found out in yet another lie - this time regarding MCA Tourism minister Ng Yen Yen and Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Soi Lek accused Guan Eng of using last Sunday's debate to attack other BN leaders, one of whom he said was Yen Yen.According to Soi Lek, Guan Eng should not have picked on Yen Yen for holding Australian permanent residency as she had no choice due to Anwar's "restrictive" policies that discriminated against Chinese students.“Because at that time when Anwar was the minister of education, he was very restrictive to the non-Bumiputras and a lot of Chinese cannot get into university. In this country, there are a lot of people who apply for PR for the sake of their children’s education,” said Soi Lek.
Sidestepped questions on Yen Yen
Soi Lek also did not offer any details as to what sort of restrictive policies Anwar had implemented that 'forced' Yen Yen to seek PR in Australia. The MCA president also shied away from giving a direct answer as to whether Yen Yen had told the MCA leadership when they appointed her their Senate representative.
As DAP's Anthony Loke has pointed out, the bone of contention was not the Australian PR per se but why Yen Yen she did not disclose this information to the public, her party and the BN government.
“What is past is past. She has already said very clearly, it’s for the sake of education,” said Soi Lek.
Proud
"This is typical of Guan Eng. He ran out of issues and instead dug up something that happened 20 years ago. I went to Australia for my son's education. I am very proud of it as my son is a very successful lawyer. I have no regrets," said Yen Yen.
She told reporters she decided to offer the 'clarification' after Guan Eng made reference to it during the debate. However Guan Eng, who is also the DAP sec-gen, had not named her.
"Yen Yen should come up with a better reason. Who does she think she’s fooling? Did she disclose her PR status to the prime minister, MCA, and Pahang government which had recommended her for the seat?" Anthony Loke had said.
"I want to ask her, was it morally right and ethically right for her to accept the post as senator, while she was holding PR status in Australia? Instead being proud of it, she should tender a public apology for misleading Malaysians.”
Anthony pointed out that Guan Eng too had studied in Australia but his father Kit Siang had not applied for PR.
Failed maneuver: What goes around comes around
“They feel that I am wasting my time. They feel that Lim is just using the debate to attack others. He does not reply to any questions asked. He planned to come here to do a ceramah, not to participate in a debate," said Soi Lek.
That the MCA president is unhappy over the entire episode is clear to see. But as they say, what goes around comes around.In the run up to the Sunday debate, MCA leaders led by Soi Lek had launched a co-ordinated attack against the Pakatan Rakyat.
The 'assault' was due to culminate with Soi Lek delivering the coup de' grace and 'finishing off' Guan Eng on Sunday so as to claw back some of the massive ground lost to the DAP.
But the planned expose' against the Selangor Pakatan's debt restructuring scheme for ailing property firm Talam went awry. Led by Soi Lek's son, Tee Yong, the ambush backfired and Tee Yong has ended up with mud in his own face after being caught using incorrect figures to build his allegations.
Malacca MCA chief Gan Tian Loo also stirred up a hornet's nest from which the MCA is unlikely to recover from for a long while. Gan and MCA tried to discredit Guan Eng by accusing him of having an affair, but instead of making the allegation directly, they tried to do so through his wife by grilling her in the Malacca state assembly. Guan Eng's wife Betty Chew is the DAP assemblywoman for Kota Laksamana.
When challenged to repeat the allegations outside the assembly, where they would no longer enjoy immunity from being sued, neither Gan, Soi Lek or any other MCA leader dared to do so.
Yet they expected the Chinese to somehow take their side despite the less than honorable behavior. Sad to say, the feedback has so far been overwhelmingly in favour of the DAP, with the MCA and Soi Lek incurring even greater public odium than before.
A disgrace
"It is a most spiteful thing to say - behavior that is not befitting the president of the MCA or any other leader worth his salt. Soi Lek only shames MCA again with his wild comment against Anwar," PKR vice president Chua Jui Meng toldMalaysia Chronicle.
"The MCA may now be at low tide and desperate. But no matter how desperate, one should never tear away at one's face to such an ugly extent. It is a shameful day for the Chinese community not just the MCA to have a member like Soi Lek."
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