By Simon Roughneen
Asia Times
KUALA LUMPUR – A not-guilty verdict in a sex scandal case against Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim could prove a game-changer in the run-up to elections due by 2013 but thought by many analysts to be held this year.
After months of railing against what he deemed trumped-up and politicized charges, Anwar cut an understandably cheerful and relieved dash on Monday morning when speaking to perhaps 3,000 supporters outside the Kuala Lumpur court where he was acquitted of charges of sodomizing a male party aide in 2008. Sodomy is a criminal offense punishable by 20 years in prison in Malaysia, where Muslim citizens are subject to sharia law.
The case, which has hung over the country’s political scene for over three years, represented the second time Anwar faced such charges. He was acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Anwar thanked God for the not-guilty verdict, telling reporters, “We must focus on the next general elections and the reform agenda. We hope for an independent judiciary and free media.”
Supporters, some of whom donned Anwar masks outside the court building, chanted “reformasi” and “long live Anwar”.
The 64-year-old opposition leader was accompanied by his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, and daughter, Nurul Izzah Anwar, both prominent politicians in their own right. The post-verdict celebrations were curbed by three small explosions that injured several protesters and damaged cars parked outside the court. Nobody took responsibility for the blasts.
The unexplained explosions underscored to some the growing polarization of Malaysian politics, pitting the ruling United Malays Nasional Organization (UMNO) against Anwar’s opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition.
UMNO, the country’s largest political party, which has ruled uninterrupted since post-colonial independence through its multi-ethnic Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, is struggling to portray itself as a force for change ahead of the upcoming polls. Some analysts believe the decision in Anwar’s favor could have been orchestrated to avoid a backlash against UMNO at the ballot box.
Ambiga Sreenavasan, head of the opposition-linked Bersih 2.0 reform movement, told Asia Times Online after the verdict that “as a lawyer I am pleased to see the upholding of the law and to have a decision that makes sense. I have always believed this was a political prosecution and it is alarming to see the court being used to bring down political opponents.”
The verdict was viewed as a surprise by none other than Malaysian politics eminence grise and former long-time prime minister Mahathir Mohamed, who said, “I’m surprised that he was not found guilty. This shows that there was no government conspiracy against him before.”
Others believe the case may have been manufactured to distract the opposition from its earlier Anwar-led drive in 2008 to unseat UMNO through parliamentary defections, which for various reasons failed to materialize. Anwar’s Pakatan Rakyat made historic inroads at the 2008 polls, winning five out of the country’s 13 federal states. UMNO, which lost its decades-long two-thirds parliamentary majority at that poll, has since recaptured control of one of those states, Perak.
Renegade reformer
Anwar, a former student leader, began his political career as a Mahathir protege before an estrangement over governance and economic and financial policies in 1998 saw him take up the reins of de facto opposition leader. That was a role that Malaysia’s opposition believes prompted corruption and sodomy charges, widely perceived as politicized, against Anwar at that time. He was sentenced in 1999 to a six-year jail term on corruption charges and in 2000 to nine years in prison for sodomy. A federal court in 2004 reversed the sodomy conviction.
Anwar spearheaded the late 1990s drive for reform, or reformasi, amid the backdrop of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and the end of the 32-year Suharto dictatorship in neighboring Indonesia. He has been consistently outspoken about the cronyism and nepotism that has come to define UMNO’s decades-long rule. After his jail term, Anwar’s wife Azizah fronted the opposition coalition’s historic success at the 2008 election, which has blunted the UMNO-led government’s previous ability to railroad legislation through a rubber-stamp legislature.
Whether or not Monday’s verdict makes the prospect of a history-making Anwar-led, non-BN government more or less likely, is not yet clear. Anwar can now run for election as a charismatic, reform-minded alternative to incumbent Najib Razak. Najib greeted Monday’s verdict as evidence that Malaysia’s judiciary is independent and free from government influence – contrary to Anwar’s and various human-rights groups’ views.
“The case against Anwar was politically motivated and plagued with irregularities,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement released after the verdict. “During the trial, the prosecution refused to turn over key evidence as required by the Malaysian criminal procedure code, including its witness list and witness statements, notes by the doctors who examined [the alleged sodomy victim] at Kuala Lumpur Hospital, pharmacists’ worksheets and notes on DNA testing and analysis, and closed-circuit television recordings from the condominium guardhouse where the alleged sodomy took place.”
The government’s counter-statement landed in journalists’ inboxes mere minutes after the verdict was read, with Information Minister Rais Yatim saying, “Malaysia has an independent judiciary and this verdict proves that the government does not hold sway over judges’ decisions. The current wave of bold democratic reforms introduced by Prime Minister Najib Razak will help extend this transparency to all areas of Malaysian life.”
Skeptics – and Malaysia’s conspiracy-prone electorate – might say that the verdict points directly to government interference given that the decision has “deprived the opposition of an emotive issue that they could milk for sympathy and point towards institutional weakness in the system”, according to Ibrahim Suffian, head of the Merdeka polling organization.
Yet Najib might feel he has Anwar and the opposition on the back-foot. After a clumsy and heavy-handed crackdown on the Bersih 2.0 protest last July, when around 20,000 people took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur seeking reform of what they described as a bent electoral system, Najib turned on his heels and pledged a series of reforms to some of Malaysia’s more stringent laws – including the Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial – on the eve of Malaysia’s independence day celebrations last September.
More broadly, some experts of Malaysian politics believe the verdict could ultimately improve the country’s democratic prospects.
Bridget Welsh, a political science academic at Singapore’s Management University, said the outcome “will make elections even more competitive as both sides will have to focus beyond personal attacks”. Merdeka’s Suffian adds that, with the trial now out of the way, the political discussion can move away from navel-gazing and towards substantive policy issues as both sides try to sway voters in advance of the election.
It’s good to recall past events…add some opinions and let young Malaysians understand.
Ambiga has said it well….as a lawyer and about the laws in our country.
Bottomline…Anwar is free from the nightmares….created to wear him down….failed.
HoHoHo….
Pakatan Rakyat will get my undivided vote + all my kopitiams frens votes too……we’ve being waiting fot that day (13th GE) to come…..bring it on B-eNd!!!…….
HoHoHo
Mamakthir’s words
SUING IN COURT
JAN11 BY CHEDET
///1. Malaysian politics of today is frequently punctuated with court actions. In particular there are now a lot of litigation cases. And the amounts sued for invariably run into millions of Ringgit.
2. Despite the efforts of the learned judges there are still huge backlogs of cases of all kinds, civil and criminal, which probably will never be heard, much less adjudged. This is because the hearings take such a long time that the parties to the cases would have forgotten the facts or they would have died.
3. And, as they say, “justice delayed is justice denied”.
4. The litigations by politicians may be justified. But politicians must accept that as politicians they would be bad-mouthed by their opponents. It is up to them to counter the allegations made. They should not always be suing in court.///–Mamakthir
The judiciary system is to uphold rule of law and to deter actions that are harmful to the society. With independence of judiciary, the citizens would exercise self restraints knowing that they would not be able to use unfair influence to dictate the outcome of a trial. Since 1988 when the Lord President of Malaysia was dismissed with trump up charges by the people having vested interest sitting in the Tribunal, the court was rendered a tool to the powers-that-be. Consequently, those in power considered they have a sure-win in court cases and hence they were at liberty to bad-mouth their political opponents. Members of the opposition parties had to go to court as a last resort knowing well that the odds were against them.
The fact that there are numerous cases going to court shows that people in the ruling party thought that they could bully because they had judges in their pocket. Otherwise, why should they create issues forcing the victims to seek recourse from the court?
Politics should have been a noble profession for people who are dedicated to serve the interests of the nation. Since 1981, politics in Malaysia have been turned into a most profitable economic activity when Mamakthir changed public tender of government projects into negotiated awards. Since then the easiest route for Malays to wealth is through UMNO leadership. UMNO Politicians knew the tested route to political power is capitalizing on race and religion and lately the excuse of protecting the Rulers. They outdo one another to win party leadership. Thus in fighting against other Malays, they have to bad mouth them. Only a person who has been long enough in the toilet got used to the odour, and it is the practitioner of gutter politics who considers bad mouthing others a fair game.
///5. For Muslims they should be willing to swear properly that there is no truth to the allegations.
6. Often the litigation is intended to shut the mouths of their opponents. In Malaysia when a case is being heard in a court, it becomes sub-judice and comments outside can constitute “contempt of court”. By suing the matter becomes sub-judice and the opponents’ mouths would be shut. Through repeated appeals the case can be prolonged and the defendants’ mouths would remain shut to the advantage of the litigant for years.///–Mamakthir
If Muslims swearing properly in a mosque serves the purposes to refute an allegation, and accepted as such, then the court would not be able to enforce the law on criminal cases when the accused simply decide to offer to swear properly. Would the court also accept non-Muslim swearing to their God in their house of worship? Should we have a country two judiciary systems, one governed by the mosque, and the other by the court?
Mamakthir is making that suggestion based on the outcome of the sodomy II trial. To Mamathir if the court does not convict Anwar, the mosque must. Does Mamakthir realize that should Anwar be accorded a trial as a Muslim would in the Shariah court, the case would have been thrown out years ago?
///7. For the person sued, much money would have to be spent on lawyers. For years he would be assailed with anxiety that he might be found guilty and if he is unable to pay he may be bankrupted.///–Mamakthir
Does Mamakthir recall what he did to Anwar charging him for corruption when hardly one ringgit changed hand? Why does Mamakthir commiserate with people facing court cases on libel suits but not with those facing trump up criminal charges which he had set precedent?
///8. Yet when the defendant wins, the litigant may need to pay cost only, which the court will fix. Often the amount would be a minute fraction of the amount he is sued for.
9. Because the cost to the litigant is so very little, the tendency is to sue for millions. This is grossly unfair to the defendants. If the law is intended to promote justice then the litigant should also suffer from the same anxieties for the length of time of the hearing and if his allegation is baseless he should pay his victim the same amount he sued for.///—Mamakthir
Yes, turn the court into a casino. The person who can buy the judge would win big.
///10. Then there would be justice and frivolous cases would not be brought before the courts. The judges would then have time for their other cases.
11. Incidentally I was sued for 100 million Ringgit. When after almost five years I won, I was awarded cost at 70 thousand Ringgit, which of course go to my lawyers.///–Mamakthir
When Najib passes the law that swearing could be accepted as evidence, the court might have to be downsized.