The strange, stupefying case of Anwar Ibrahim.
How strange can Anwar Ibrahim’s political career get? Back when he was a threat to Mahathir Mohamad, the former autocrat used sodomy charges to toss him in jail for six years. The general assumption then was that it was all manufactured — this was Mahathir, after all, and the prospect of a major Malay political leader being so stupid was rather thin. And yet, here we are again, with Ibrahim on the cusp of power, and again the object of sodomy charges. A brief period of self-imposed exile in the Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, followed by a massive rally today, have so far marked the opposition leader’s erratic response to the charges.
The assumption of too many is that the Malaysian ruling coalition is up to Mahathir’s old tricks — responding to a political threat with a nakedly political allegation. Certainly this is the assumption of the US Department of State and the Wall Street Journal-Asia. The former, via Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey, issued a remarkably clumsy statement that the United States hopes this affair is a “legitimate investigation of charges that might exist under Malaysian law and would not be … a politically motivated investigation or prosecution.” The latter, in a staff editorial, declared, “For the ‘crime’ of winning the public’s confidence, Mr. Anwar is facing accusations that could derail his political career and threaten Malaysia’s democratic institutions.” The State Department’s statement is at least defensible, if ham-handed — and it has provoked a predictable reaction from within Malaysia — but the WSJ-Asia simply assumes too much. For the sake of argument, accept the implicit proposition that the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi harbors the same values and methods as that of Mahathir Mohamad. Accept that Badawi is the Medvedev to Mahathir’s Putin. Does it follow from this that the Malaysian ruling apparatus, and especially its apparatus of repression, is wholly incompetent? Does it follow from this that they would, Zimbabwe-style, simply resort to the same tried and true excuse for political persecution?
I submit that those who believe this are not especially familiar with modern Malaysia — nor are they reading the polls of Malaysians right now, most of which indicate a near-universal disbelief in the veracity of the charges against Ibrahim.
The truth is that this implicit proposition is almost certainly false. The hatred of Mahathir for Badawi is well documented, not least on this site, and as well documented are the reasons for that hatred. Chief among them is Badawi’s gutting of the corrupt judicial structure that Mahathir put into place, accomplished in part by the appointment of fierce Mahathir critic (and pro-reform advocate) Zaid Ibrahim as law minister. (I had an opportunity to meet Minister Ibrahim — no relation to Anwar Ibrahim — a few weeks back, and the photos are here.) Furthermore, many of Badawi’s other reforms have directly benefitted his would-be overthrower Anwar Ibrahim, not least by the liberalization of press laws that aid the latter’s party far more than the ruling coalition. If the new charges against Ibrahim were manufactured by the government — as the old ones certainly seemed to be — it would make no sense, as the mechanisms to exploit those charges have been almost wholly dismantled by that same government.
So where does this leave us? As with Malaysia at large, in a very confused place. It is technically possible, of course, that elements within the government are having a go at framing Ibrahim again — but if they are, it’s a doomed effort, given the facts established by the prime minister himself It is also technically possible that Anwar Ibrahim has a penchant for his fellow man, which lends itself to repeat sodomy prosecutions. To paraphrase a disgraced leader closer to home, these are our known unknowns. As we watch the situation in Malaysia unfold, the best we can do is to eschew the examples of our State Department and WSJ-Asia — and wait and see.
