Anwar… forever victim, never villain

THE story of the week for many must be the one about Anifah Aman blowing the lid off Anwar Ibrahim. And the irony is so amusing.

By Syed Nadzri (NST)

This is especially so coming just days after a pro-Anwar salvo appeared in The New Yorker. The tear-jerker in the May 15 issue of the weekly magazine put the opposition leader and former deputy prime minister in shimmering light with a lengthy essay that started off by portraying him as someone who lives constantly in fear of his safety — even at the KL Hilton where the interview with the writer was conducted.

But that image changed completely when Foreign Minister Datuk Anifah Aman at a media conference at the US State Department in Washington three days ago revealed that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had offered him a lucrative post, equivalent to the deputy prime minister's post, as bait to switch sides after the general election last year.

"He was trying to entice members of parliament," Anifah was quoted as saying by Bernama. "And I was personally offered to jump to the opposition and offered a very lucrative position."

Anifah said the post was equivalent to that of deputy prime minister. The truth was only revealed now.

That's a humdinger from Anifah in the present political climate.

Anwar has denied all this and has threatened to sue, charging that the allegations were baseless, untrue, defamatory and made with malicious intent to tarnish his reputation.

But I think the more interesting side to the whole story is not just what was said about the alleged offer (which has now turned contentious) but the significance of the "where and when" of the minister's startling disclosure.

Where? In the US. And it strikes at the very heart of the Anwar agenda, especially when the story despatched from Washington was accompanied by photographs of Anifah standing beside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a news conference.

The irony of it all was that Anifah, when he made the statement, was merely responding to questions from the international media about whether the "Anwar issue" was brought up at their meeting since the US State Department's annual human rights report had mentioned that charges against Anwar were politically motivated.

In addition, everyone knows that Anwar's camp always gloats about his special connection with Washington. The sight of Anifah and Clinton smiling to the cameras with the flags of both countries as the backdrop, therefore, must have been quite hard to bear. And especially so now that better prospects have emerged in Malaysia's relations with the US with news that Datuk Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis might be made ambassador to Washington and there might be a meeting at the highest level soon between the leaders of the two countries.

As for the "when", this has to be seen in the light of that 5,500-word New Yorker piece by Ian Buruma, which started off thus: "Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's voice was barely audible above the background din of chattering guests and a cocktail-bar pianist at the Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

"Anwar — who had rebounded from six years in prison on corruption and sodomy charges to become the best hope for a more democratic, less corrupt Malaysia — speaks softly. He is still under constant surveillance, he said."

Speaks softly? Why, just over the weekend, he was in Tanah Liat, Berapit, Semambu and Kampung Tok Elong in mainland Penang, addressing public rallies presumably as a run-up to the Penanti by-election. And last week he was live on Al-Jazeera.

But such is the Anwar tactic that we know so well — portray yourself as victim, push yourself as the hope.

The whole premise of the New Yorker article was pinned on that, which is nothing new, tracing the developments from the reformasi days with the underlying message — as in all other write-ups on him appearing quite consistently of late in the international media — that he should be prime minister "as only he can patch over the differences between secularists and Islamists because Anwar is a liberal Malay with impeccable Muslim credentials".

That's the same Anwar we see somewhere in the background of the current Perak political imbroglio. Isn't it amazing that some quarters have sought to portray the Pakatan Rakyat he leads as defenceless victims of the power play he himself started?

Some people have conveniently forgotten that it was the brash and confident Anwar who went to town towards the end of last year with claims that Pakatan had managed to get many MPs from Barisan Nasional to switch sides and that the fall of the Federal Government was only a matter of time.

It was also Anwar who relished the moment when Bota assemblyman Datuk Nasarudin Hashim crossed over from Umno to Parti Keadilan Rakyat on Chinese New Year's eve. Remember that one?

When the tide subsequently turned the other way, leading to the current tangle, it has now become someone else's fault. And he's the victim.