Anwar’s rhetorical slip is showing
Terence Netto, Malaysiakini
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s speech struggles to keep up with his thought process. In sum, his elocution lags behind his ratiocination.
Recent instances of the lag put him in a spot.
The most telling case was his response to a media query after his China visit when news secreted that the People’s Republic was encouraged by Anwar’s position that Malaysia is willing to negotiate Petronas’ mining on a shelf off Sarawak’s coast that’s within our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
This played into China’s claim that all of the South China Sea is in that country’s territorial waters.
Anwar had to quickly clarify that Petronas was mining for oil and gas well within Malaysia’s EEZ.
And that right is non-negotiable, although matters can be discussed.
Buoyed at obtaining RM170 billion in investment pledges on his China visit, Anwar allowed the good vibes stemming from that success to render him propitiatory.
This oversight opened Anwar to opposition attacks that he was selling Malaysia short.
Anwar’s advisers had to double down on the argument that no such short-selling occurred and that Malaysia will defend its rights to resources within its EEZ.
In more than five decades of prolific public speaking, Anwar has said much, a good deal of it not having been delivered from the thought that has congealed.
Two spells in prison should have afforded him time for composition to be in tandem with ratiocination.
Lengthy but empty responses
In recent days, two interlocutors have attempted to point out this disjointed aspect in Anwar’s speechifying.
Tasek Gelugor MP Wan Saiful Wan Jan, in attempting to defend the absence of Perikatan Nasional’s top three leaders during Prime Minister’s Question Time in Parliament, remarked on this disjointed quality as an excuse for his top leadership’s no-show at PMQT
He claimed Anwar failed to give satisfactory answers to questions posed, with lengthy but empty responses.
This tendency to “speak[s] in a confusing way” was alluded to by Khairy Jamaluddin, former health minister and defeated Umno candidate for Sungai Buloh.
Now a TV pundit, Khairy said he noticed that sometimes Anwar has a habit of trailing off on a sentence, leaving it incomplete or hanging, before moving on to a new sentence, thus leaving his listeners confused.
Former health minister Khairy Jamaluddin
This aspect of Anwar’s rhetorical style must have grown from decades of delivering speeches extempore – on the hustings and on semi-official occasions when there is little time to prepare.
Ideas and images collide and bend each other’s fenders and there is nobody to tell you better.
Thought voiced without premeditation leads to such instances as when Anwar, when witnessing a function on his recent visit to Cambodia where government aid was disbursed to Muslims, spoke of the presumption of some Malays from Malaysia about their overall situation.
As Khairy has observed, in saying things in this vein Anwar could be understood in the context in which he spoke, but he risked inviting criticism from a strategic standpoint.
And the criticism was indeed what he incurred for saying such a thing in Cambodia.
There is an upside to all this of course.
Another pundit, Shahril Hamdan, former Umno information chief and defeated parliamentary candidate for Alor Gajah, said it is refreshing when a statesperson is willing to speak without a script.
He said people wanted a leader who can speak directly and not hide behind a script.
An unscripted Anwar can indeed be a breadth of fresh air but he has to have savvy damage control aides who can tamp down the bushfires this inevitably ignite.
TERENCE NETTO is a journalist with half a century’s experience.
