Anwar waves his magic and and thrills European audiences
By Tunku Abdul Aziz, MySinchew
I have had to come all the way to Brussels and Berlin to discover a side of Anwar Ibrahim that I was wrong about.
Reading the Barisan Nasional-owned newspapers that consistently portrayed him as a “traitor to Malaysia” who exaggerated the situation obtaining in the country given half a chance, I have, I must admit, tended to view him as a self-serving political demagogue who could not care less about the fate of his country as long as he achieved his ambition of becoming prime minister.
Anwar spoke last Monday evening (28 September 2010), on “Liberal Values in the Muslim World – Why Islam and Democracy are Destined to Coincide” to a packed hall of some of Europe’s powerful decision makers. These were men and women with wide international experience and could not be easily hoodwinked even if he had tried.
It was vintage Anwar, perfect smooth as silk delivery of a complex, serious subject to a critical audience. He knew his stuff. His was more than a speech; it was an intellectual journey mapped out by someone who knew the area traversed like the back of his hand.
There he stood, under the spotlight, his charming and quietly confident self as always, speaking without a note for a full hour. Earlier in the day, when he said to me he had to go back to his hotel room to give his speech the once over, I told him half in jest that he could make his speech standing on his head. He did just that and more. He successfully won the audience over with his argument, supported by historical antecedents and more recent examples that completely demolished the conventional wisdom in non-Muslim circles that Islam and democracy were somehow incompatible bed fellows. He challenge the unfounded belief that it was against the order of nature for Islam to embrace democracy as seriously flawed because of the underlying assumption that Muslims, unlike others, were not born free to exercise their democratic rights.
As I sat listening to the prime minister Malaysia never had, thanks to Mahathir the Maverick, and who might yet take the country by storm, Anwar, I mean, not Mahathir, I could not help thinking how utterly sad and absurd for Najib, whose articulation of his 1Malaysia slogan invariably finishes in a cul-de-sac, offering his services to Obama to help bring about greater understanding of Islam, the religion of peace, among the majority American non-Muslims. My dear fellow, charity begins at home.
The only Malaysian politician, who can, without making a fool of himself, stride the world stage with the right combination of strong intellectual credentials and honesty, is not to be found within the serried ranks of the BN, but in the person of Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s iconic liberal democrat.
As I saw here in Brussels, he had the European parliamentary leadership, figuratively speaking, eating out of his hands. Many have already put the champagne on ice; they clearly see this victim of a rotten political system as the next man to lead the country.
