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All attempts to remove Anwar from the mix have backfired
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MP SPEAKS | There has been a sea change since Anwar Ibrahim was sent to prison in February 2015. The constant attempts to remove Anwar from Malaysia’s political equation since 2008 has now backfired on Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

It has produced one of the most unthinkable reconciliations in Malaysian history between two nemeses: Anwar and Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

I was on an Astro TV channel for a Mandarin talk show programme when I first heard the news of police report filed by Saiful Bukhari Azlan against Anwar in 2008. Between 2004 and Najib’s ascendancy as Prime Minister in April 2009, there was a period of time in which television stations experienced a small spring of freedom.

Many political talk show programmes were aired in multiple languages. The rules then were: no attack on then-prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (photo); and speak with facts. All these came to a halt as soon as Najib became prime minister.

Upon hearing the news, I rushed to Concorde Hotel, Shah Alam, where PKR was having a retreat, to offer Anwar our morale support. Anwar sought asylum at the Turkish embassy the following day.

Lest we forget, we must undertsand the context that led to Anwar’s second imprisonment a decade ago.

What they did to Anwar

In March 2008, BN lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority and an unprecedented five states. The opposition won 82 parliamentary seats, up from merely 19 seats gained in the 2004 general election.

Anwar was barred from contesting until April 2008, five years after his first prison sentence ended. He was released by the Federal Court on Sept 2, 2004, while serving the second prison sentence. Coincidentally, Anwar was sacked by Mahathir on the same date in 1998, when the former was the deputy prime minister.

Most analysts agreed that Abdullah should dissolve Parliament on Feb 12, 2008 (on the 7th day of Chinese New Year) before it reached its four-year mark, to avoid Anwar being eligible from standing in the election.

Fundamental to BN’s longevity has been the lack of a singular opposition front and a common leader accepted across ethnic communities. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah provided such leadership in the 1990 general election, and Anwar played that role in the 1999 election while in prison.

Anwar would reprise the role in 2013, although the consensus of him being the alternative choice for prime minister was not recognised by PAS, then one of the three component parties of Pakatan Rakyat.

Anwar-Guan Eng factor

Despite not being eligible to contest, Anwar’s leadership was the major contributing factor to the political tsunami in the 2008 general election.

A case in point was the seat deal in Penang between PKR and DAP in January 2008. I was the minute secretary assisting DAP leaders Tan Kok Wai and Teresa Kok in their seat negotiation effort.

An explicit red line was conveyed – DAP in Penang would contest 21 out of 40 state seats. Eventually Anwar and Lim Guan Eng settled at DAP contesting 19 seats, while PKR was to split the remaining seats with PAS.

The deal gave the Penang opposition the certainty of seats so that they could launch into their ground campaign. I was slated to contest in Bukit Bendera parliamentary seat and benefited indirectly from the deal.

The PKR candidate who was originally slated for the Pulau Tikus state seat, deemed unwinnable as the opponent was Gerakan’s supposed Chief Minister candidate Teng Hock Nam, was given the seat of Kebun Bunga, said to be easier to win.

He happily ceded his campaign centre at the beautiful Bangkok Lane. Much as everyone else said Bukit Bendera was an impossible feat, on the day I moved to the 80-year-old building, I felt I was on the way to victory.

More importantly, the deal sealed the national image of an Anwar-Guan Eng leadership pair. Guan Eng (photo) spent a year at Kajang Prison from August 1998, while Anwar was incarcerated between September 1998 and 2004. Guan Eng was not able to contest in both the 1999 and 2004 general elections. The 2008 election was the first outing for him since 1995.

The Anwar-Guan Eng combo image had huge national ramifications in the two months subsequent to the January 2008 deal.

The deal reached by Pakatan Harapan on 7th January 2018 to name Mahathir as the 7th prime minister and Anwar the 8th, as well as the seat deal, resulted in a similar feeling.

Umno was in turmoil after the March 2008 election as Abdullah’s supposedly lackadaisical leadership was blamed for the losses suffered by Umno-BN. Anwar was eligible to contest from April 2008 onwards, and talk of BN being replaced on Sept 16 with Anwar as PM began to emerge.

Pakatan Rakyat was officially formed on April 1, 2008, which further enhanced the image of Anwar as the alternative prime minister.

Abdullah’s folly

Anger flared across the nation when Abdullah increased petrol prices by 40 percent in June that year. The public began to be receptive of, and excited by the idea of a new government led by Anwar.

An emergency Parliament sitting was called on June 23 to endorse the government’s move to increase petrol prices in the hope of diffusing public anger. Many MPs from BN privately shared their frustrations with us, and some thought the fall of BN was not impossible.

Until this day, I am still puzzled by Abdullah’s decision on the massive fuel price hike. His position was already severely undermined with the election, and further eroded when Mahathir quit Umno in protest of his leadership in May 2008.

The advocates for the 40 percent fuel hike should have been punished for ending Pak Lah’s already rapidly diminishing leadership.

Around the same time, in an attempt to show openness and readiness, Ahmad Shabery Cheek (photo), then the information minister, agreed to debate Anwar on television on petrol prices, further giving Anwar the legitimacy as the alternative leader.

The debate was slated for July 15, but a day before, Kuala Lumpur was in lockdown in an attempt to arrest Anwar – probably to stop the debate from taking place. Anwar was subsequently arrested on July 16, a day after the debate.

Najib and Sodomy II

Najib has the most to lose in the event of a sudden change of government in Anwar’s favour.

He was somewhat implicated in the Altantuya Shaariibuu scandal. I introduced myself to Najib at the sidelines of the Shangri-La Defencee Dialogue in Singapore in June 2008 before he took to the stage to speak.

The first thing he told me – a fellow Malaysian MP from the opposition whom he had met for the first time – was that he wasn’t involved in the Mongolian scandal. My Umno friends think that the scandal was at the back of his mind all the time and he was always worried that he would be the first to suffer in the event of change.

Anwar’s legal team had repeatedly argued that Saiful’s meeting with Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor days before his police report showed that Najib had a role in the Sodomy II case.

The choice of Shafie Abdullah, a private lawyer closely aligned to Najib, as the government’s prosecutor in the appeal case has been a point of contention. Suffice to say that the need to take out Anwar from the equation was very intense in June 2008, as well as after the 2013 general election.

While Sept 16 did not happen – the date where BN MPs were said to be crossing over to the opposition - Najib did force Abdullah to give up his Finance portfolio on Sept 17, 2008, and subsequently, upon tasting blood, forced Abdullah to commit to retirement during their meeting less than two weeks later.

Najib (photo) became Prime Minister on April 3, 2009.

Anwar should be remembered for his commitment and love to Malaysia. Days before his acquittal by the High Court on Jan 12, 2012, Anwar told a Pakatan Rakyat presidential council meeting which I attended that he was not going into exile and would stay back to face prison. I was deeply touched. We were elated when he was acquitted.

Najib probably didn’t think he would do so badly in the 2013 general election. Post-election, he knew that the only way for him to win in the subsequent election was to kill the idea of an alternative prime minister and the singular opposition coalition.

Using Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla as go-between, Najib offered Anwar to join his cabinet in the hope of splitting Pakatan Rakyat, an offer which Anwar rejected and eventually paid the price with his freedom.

Najib moved to isolate and take Anwar out from the equation, and to lure PAS into Umno’s fold, and to paint the political battle as one between Umno-PAS – saviours  of Islam and the Malay race – versus the opposition dominated by the purportedly “Chinese” DAP.

The future of Malaysia

By Oct 2014, after the fallout of the Kajang Move and an impending court judgement, I asked Anwar if he would consider doing a Thaksin Shinawatra and leave the country, as I felt there was no point for him to suffer another long jail term, given that he was not as young and as healthy as he was during his first prison stint.

I was made to understand that at least one leader of an important Muslim nation offered him asylum. But Anwar said he was committed to Malaysia and believed that he had no choice but to stay back to face prison, so that the PKR grassroots and the entire opposition could hold its head high that they don’t have a fugitive leader, but one that was brave to face any consequences for the struggle.

Malaysian politics can be very brutal and cruel. I feel very sad whenever I think of Anwar’s second imprisonment.

But maybe God does work in mysterious ways. The leadership void in the opposition is now filled by Mahathir (left in photo) through a grand reconciliation with Anwar twenty years after 1998, which many Malaysians felt relieved about.

If Pakatan Harapan wins power, the new government will be as much a Mahathir government as it is an Anwar government.

It is going to be a Reformasi government, of the people, by the people, for the people.

I look forward to a better Malaysia led by the two political foes now reconciled as governing partners.


LIEW CHIN TONG is the MP for Kluang, DAP Johor chairperson and the party’s national political education director.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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