The end of Sodomy 2.0
(The Economist) – Although Mr Anwar remains a charismatic figure and a forceful speaker, his reputation has been tarnished. That won’t matter to his acolytes, but at 64 he also seems a distant and untrustworthy figure to many younger Malaysians. He has failed to nurture a new generation of opposition leaders. Rather than turning his party into a vibrant, modernising force in politics he has allowed it to become something of a family-run affair, riven by infighting.
AFTER more than two years of legal wrangling, sordid media revelations and political point-scoring, on January 9th the High Court in Malaysia’s capital finally handed down a verdict in Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case—not guilty. Homosexuality is illegal in Muslim-majority Malaysia, and if found guilty the former deputy prime minister and current leader of the opposition could have been jailed for up to 20 years. Now, however, Mr Anwar’s vindication allows him to throw his energies into fighting the government in a general election expected later this year.
The case began in 2008 when a male aide reported to the police that Mr Anwar had sodomised him. Mr Anwar, however, maintains that the whole trial was a put-up job by a nervous government, desperate to discredit him after he came close to winning a general election earlier that year. The whole affair seemed an unlikely rerun of similar charges brought against Mr Anwar when he was ousted from his post as deputy prime minister in 1998—hence the moniker of Sodomy 2.0 for this case. Indeed, Mr Anwar claims that all the legal suits over the past 14 years add up to a sustained vendetta against him by the ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which has ruled the country continuously since independence from Britain in 1957. Once the golden boy of UMNO, Mr Anwar claims the feud started after he fell out with the autocratic and long-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. He has been demonised by his former colleagues ever since.
After the first accusations in 1998, Mr Anwar spent six years in prison for corruption and sodomy before being cleared of the second charge by the country’s supreme court and released in 2004. This time the judge ruled that the prosecution case against Mr Anwar was too flimsy for a conviction; the DNA evidence, in particular, was ruled unreliable.
If the two sodomy charges really were invented by some in UMNO bent on wrecking Mr Anwar’s career, then the strategy has backfired. The first case in 1998 rallied huge public sympathy for Mr Anwar. With Sodomy 2.0 he has been publicly vindicated, despite a widespread belief that he was going to be convicted. Indeed, the government swiftly attempted to exploit this by claiming that the verdict showed “the government does not hold sway over judges’ decisions”, framing this as part of its vaunted reform programme. The independence and quality of the judiciary has improved a little since the days of Dr Mahathir, but many in Malaysia remain cynical and conspiracy theories abound.
How will the verdict affect Malaysia’s politics? In the short term Mr Anwar’s victory will give a much-needed boost to the coalition of opposition parties that he leads. So much so, in fact, that the cautious prime minister, Najib Razak, might even postpone going to the polls.
In the longer term, however, things are less clear-cut. Although Mr Anwar remains a charismatic figure and a forceful speaker, his reputation has been tarnished. That won’t matter to his acolytes, but at 64 he also seems a distant and untrustworthy figure to many younger Malaysians. He has failed to nurture a new generation of opposition leaders. Rather than turning his party into a vibrant, modernising force in politics he has allowed it to become something of a family-run affair, riven by infighting.
In prison, some political operators say, he could have served as a useful martyr figure to rally the opposition. Now, they are stuck with him indefinitely as a leader. Mr Anwar may still be popular enough to land a few blows on the government. But he may also be too weakened to deliver the knockout punch.
