Mahathir's sacking of his heir apparent Anwar Ibrahim smacks of a nexus with big business
THE crackdown began on September 2, two days after Malaysia's independence day anniversary. Anwar Ibrahim, till then prime minister Mahathir Mohammed's heir apparent, was sacked as deputy prime minister and finance minister on a litany of unspecified charges—offences of treason, sodomy, adultery, corruption and misdemeanours under the Official Secrets Act. Mahathir then convened his UMNO party's supreme council and drummed Anwar out of the party.
A series of unpublicised, though clearly related arrests thereafter indicate the drama is far from over. Among those nabbed are three senior civil servants and a businessman, an occasional tennis partner. Observers say even the probability of Anwar facing a capital charge cannot be ruled out.
Initially, Anwar was ordered to resign, but when he refused to do so he was sacked. The police then surrounded his official residence, his water and electricity supply was cut (though that was corrected by the emergency power unit in the grounds), and the inspector general of police threatened him with fresh charges every time the government was discomfited with yet another overseas television or newspaper interview. The presence of a large number of reporters and television crews, here for the Commonwealth Games which began last week, accorded Anwar an opportunity to give vent to his grievances.
Anwar, surrounded by aides and supporters, replied spiritedly to every charge against him, which appeared in the foreign newspapers and TV shows but not in the local media, where all his utterances were blacked out. But public sympathy is clearly with him. Last week, he addressed a gathering outside his new house, attracting a crowd of about 10,000. He now plans a country-wide roadshow. In fact, the attendance outside his office for his talks has been so huge that hawkers have set up food stalls.
For his part, Mahathir has tried to wrest the offensive by asserting that his former deputy does not have the requisite moral credentials to lead an "Islamic nation like Malaysia". The prime minister's cohorts have been touring the country, playing audiotapes of an alleged conversation between Anwar and the wife of a party leader. There are dark hints of incriminating video tapes a la D.P. Vijandran, the Malaysian Indian Congress leader who once was deputy speaker of the Malaysian parliament and whose sexual trysts were captured on tape.
It is alleged that Anwar is a paedophile, that he sodomised one man 15 times, that he tried to seduce the wife of a businessman on one of his overseas tours, that he had sex with his wife's driver and with an aide's wife. (Interestingly, allegations that this aide's wife gave birth to a love child have since been disproved by DNA tests.) Central to these insinuations is a supposed recording of Anwar's flirtations with a party official; this was alleged in the UMNO supreme council which expelled him from the party, although at the crucial moment, when the speaker tried to replay the tape, the battery ran out! But the harassment continues: a well-organised campaign to distribute that tape widely is under way. This correspondent had one slipped into his mail box in the dead of night and, having listened to it, is still uncertain if the voice on the tape is indeed Anwar's.
MOST of these allegations surfaced during an investigation of a political tract, 50 Reasons Why Anwar Cannot Be Prime Minister, released during the June 1998 general assembly of the UMNO, which dominates the governing coalition. While the tract is subject to a court injunction pending Anwar's request for a ban, it is still in circulation.
A central figure in all this is Anwar's tennis partner, Nallakaruppan Solaimalai, a company director, who the book alleges provided his friend with men and women for sexual trysts. He was arrested in connection with allegations in the book, but was quickly charged with possessing 126 bullets for a gun he does not own. The penalty for that is mandatory death on conviction. However, a detailed statement issued by his lawyers, denying any suggestion that he had been involved in the alleged nefarious activities, seems to have weakened the government's case against him.
A first generation Indian immigrant, Nalla, as he is widely known, rose to dizzying heights in the corporate world after an early career as a toddy tapper. For a while he dallied with Malaysian Indian Congress politics, but after a quarrel with party president S. Samy Vellu veered towards Anwar.
However, it is more than certain that sexual demeanour is merely a handy excuse for Anwar's dismissal. In fact, many observers agree with his plaint that the travails he faces are the result of a "high level" conspiracy of hostile businessmen and senior party officials unwilling to accept him as prime minister, which had seemed a certainty till now.
Anwar had joined the UMNO in 1982 and stunned everyone with his rapid rise, becoming deputy prime minister just 11 years later. Along the way he made more than his fair share of enemies. His focused political orchestration, which at one time blurred his long-stated support for an Islamicised Malaysian society, had him balancing his credentials in the Muslim world with a working relationship with the US and other Western countries. This raised the hackles of his older cabinet colleagues, who began to feel threatened by him. He also took the untraditional position of disagreeing with the prime minister on fiscal, monetary and economic policies, and stridently objected to some specific privatisation moves which were invariably goaded by cronyistic or nepotistic considerations. His resistance to awarding economically and financially dubious projects to the reigning barons made him a marked man.
Anwar has been fighting back with elan. The manner of his dismissal from the government and party was so flawed that most Malays don't quite believe the charges hurled at him. Significantly, while this sympathy may not help Anwar in reclaiming his political eminence, the 73-year-old prime minister too has not emerged unscathed. Suddenly, the probability that both leaders, the mainstays of the Malaysian political system for decades, could be out of the political scene within a year cannot be ruled out.
And the future seems increasingly uncertain. One of the two possible successors, foreign minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is a colourless, well-meaning politician, whose hold on the party is questionable; the other contender, education minister Najib Tun Razak's competence is marred by a weight of sexual charges and allegations that could well sink him.
The more frightening consequence of Anwar's exit is the division of the Malaysian polity into two disparate extreme groups, and the consequent irrelevance of all shades in between. The Malaysian corporate world, which the바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트 governing coalition encouraged as a consequence of the New Economic Policy, now has a life of its own; it is so powerful, and amoral, that it now wants a say on who ought to be the country's leaders. At the other extreme is the highly 'moral' Islamic community, with its long-term aim of creating a Muslim ummah in Malaysia. It is between these two extremes that Mahathir has been caught. With seemingly no way out.