IT would be quite preposterous if, by now, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim still hasn’t a clue that not many actually bought into his demonisation of his predecessors of corruption and abuse of power.
If anything, the Prime Minister should also by now realise that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) investigations into the personalities are viewed as him using the agency to afflict his political vendetta.
And if previously, Anwar thought that such thoughts were only prevalent among his critics and those opposed to him, the media is mainstreaming the idea.
While, indeed, the local media had not sung such songs, it is the foreign media which used to place him on a pedestal that seemed to have changed their opinion. Bloomberg is not the first.
Before that, it was the London-based The Economist in its article “Why Does the West Back The Wrong Asian Leader”, which is quite self-explanatory and did not do Anwar any favours in the reputational department.
The New York-based Bloomberg was at one time promoted by one of Anwar’s generals, while they were the Opposition, as a credible source of reference for Malaysians.
Recently, in an article, Bloomberg unabashedly suggested that Anwar’s self-proclaimed anti-corruption drive was a vendetta against his political opponents.
That was some three weeks ago and there have yet to be any substantial moves to challenge Bloomberg to furnish any proof to their allegations. The only things that came from the PM’s office were mere denials and not even making any effort to censure or take the international media house to task.
The Bloomberg damning article can be summed up simply as accusing Anwar of pursuing political vendetta, that he had agreed to overlook the MACC’s head honcho Azam Baki’s financial wrongdoings if was prepared to be the tool of the vendetta and instructing Azam not to investigate his former political secretary Farhash Wafa Salvador in a billion-ringgit deal which had been accused of impropriety.
While the dust over the Bloomberg report had yet to settle, with numerous parties demanding the PM to sue or act against the publication, Anwar may have tried to get his mojo back by agreeing to an interview by Mehdi Hassan, the popular, hard-hitting political commentator.
He may have got his 15-minute fame in some parts of the interview but when it came to questions from Hassan on the issue of his war against corruption in Malaysia, Anwar was observed to be on the defensive and incapable of giving anything convincing.
Hassan did not ignore the elephant in the room and pointed out to Anwar of Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s 47 cases which were given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA).
It did not require an Oxford-trained and erstwhile commentator like Hassan to address the issue.
How does Anwar reconcile his fight against corruption by appointing someone whom Anwar himself had convinced voters of being corrupt and needed to be stopped from getting anywhere to the corridors of power?
While most voters, in particular his supporters, may have accepted the political reality that Anwar wouldn’t be able to become PM if he did not collaborate with Zahid, it is, however, too much too stomach for him to appoint Zahid as his deputy.
There are three key elements over Anwar’s fight against corruption in the Bloomberg article and Hassan’s – Zahid’s DNAA, Farhash’s business prowess and Azam’s role in the equation.
There are, however, more to these.
Anwar is also fast losing his credibility with his cavalier remarks on going on the offensive against former leaders who had stolen billions without providing any proof.
He had repeated it once too often – accusing these leaders of stealing billions and yet, to date, he had yet to furnish any proof.
Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had called his bluff and initiated a defamation suit against Anwar, demanding that he prove his allegations that he had stolen billions and abused his position while he was in office.
It had been more than a year since the suit was filed but to date, there has been no signs of any proof being furnished by Anwar to back his accusations.
Whether Anwar is unconsciously doing it or emerging from the unending need to be seen as the champion of the poor and working class against the rich, is developing into a class conflict, especially within the Malay Muslim psyche.
It has come to a point whereby any successful Malay must have become one through nepotism and cronyism if not outright corruption.
While there are those corrupt, there’s a thin line between being a crony and those given the leg-up under affirmative action, something Anwar should be very familiar with.
However, Anwar’s attack on a self-made Malay industrialist immediately after he took office did not go down well with the community especially when the industrialist is well known for his charities and contributions to the cause of Islam and the Malays.
Juxtaposed to Anwar’s Farhash, attempts to paint the industrialist as one of the nation’s greedy capitalists was a puerile political manoeuvre.
Unfortunately, Anwar’s political narratives seemed quite limited – the fight against corruption, cronyism and that the poor are a result of others stealing national wealth – a mantra he uttered since his student activism days.
It could have worked somewhat if the likes of Zahid, Azam and Farhash, among others, were not holding major roles in the whole equation, something Anwar would fully comprehend and should be working on remedying them.
Unless it is all done out of sheer hubris.
- Shamsul Akmar is an editor at The Malaysian Reserve.