Anwar…it’s always about you!
Ex-Convent Girl
If there is one thing Anwar Ibrahim can offer the world, it would be his uncanny ability to grab all attention for himself even when it is largely unwarranted and in absolute bad taste.
Over the last few weeks, I have watched with deep disgust at how Anwar has made the entire episode of the missing MH370 less about the passengers and SAR crews and more about himself.
From the onset, Anwar has berated the government’s handling of this emergency situation, from attacking Malaysia’s air force for sleeping on the job to accusing Najib’s administration of withholding information or giving it out only scantily.
While the nation has been weighed down by mounting anxiety, growing desperation and deepening grief about the missing plane, Anwar is strutting around like a proud cockerel in a hens’ coop, boasting to our local press how so many foreign media want to talk to him, not Najib.
Yes, the brilliant orator and ‘speak-before-I-think’ Anwar is on a roll. Is he so naïve not to see that the foreign media are merely using him to sell more newspapers and boost TV ratings so they can rake in more advertising dollars?
CNN wasted 10 minutes on a lacklustre interview with Anwar that shed no light whatsoever on whereabouts of the missing plane. Amanpour herself asked weak questions just to play up the sensationalism surrounding Anwar’s links to Captain Zaharie and the government’s purported persecution of the former.
Caught up in the excitement of exploiting this tragedy to further his political career, Anwar himself forgets he denied knowing the captain in the first place, only to have his own wife let it slip. PKR’s homegrown town crier in the form of Sivarasa, MP of Subang did no favours for Anwar either by telling everybody who would listen, that Captain Zaharie was a lifelong member of PKR. Yet Anwar insinuates that Najib and the government was behind leaking this information to the foreign press. How convenient to dump the mess his own people made, on Najib’s head.
Now Anwar gloats in glee as the cameras and lights are trained on him so he can address an international audience and lament how the Malaysian government is thoroughly incompetent and trying to pin the blame of the missing plane on him.
Yes… this tragedy is all about Anwar. Not the crew… not the passengers… not the plane… and less about the countless noble men and women from all over the world who have joined SAR operations to locate the missing plane for us. No not any of them. This tragedy is about Anwar and his political persecution by an evil and corrupt regime bent on doing him in for good.
All that matters is that Anwar is in the news once again, not calling for calm and solidarity but using the opportunity to voice his dissatisfaction that someone from the Najib administration is leaking information to the foreign press about his links to the captain.
However when the Kajang move failed to gain as much traction as he wanted, Anwar sunk to his lowest when he used this tragedy as an advantageous political platform to further his twisted brand of leadership.
Standing on a stage against the backdrop of his wife Wan Azizah, Anwar commands the stage, making jokes about the Malaysian air force and how they could not detect the plane. The crowds are in throes of laughter and Anwar dishes out one joke after another about a very grave incident that to this day is as yet unsolved.
He jokes about the plane flying over the peninsula undetected… he jokes about the air force chief’s conflicting statements… he jokes at how the government is fumbling to get their act together in regards to statements issued about MH370.
Yes. Why would Anwar show statesmanship in a time of national crisis? Why would he show he too is standing united with our government to find the wreckage? How could he when he is peeved at the fact this mishap is hogging the limelight and the Kajang by-election is just around the corner?
No time for solidarity. No time to be a gentleman. Time to show up the government for how incompetent they are. Time to amp up lamentations of political persecution. Yes… time to bring the limelight back to Anwar. Washed-out politician. Disgraceful Malaysian.
REFERENCE
VIDEO OF ANWAR IN KAJANG ON 22 MARCH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXDcYfcUH4