PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim’s judicial and political travails of more than a decade ago came up for introspection at the launch of a book on the trials involving him that became an international cause célèbre.
The book ‘Anwar on Trial: In the Face of Injustice’ was written by lawyer Pawancheek Marican and launched in Kuala Lumpur yesterday by Raja Aziz Addruse (left), former chairman of the Malaysian Bar Council.
Both Pawancheek and Raja Aziz were members of the legal team that defended Anwar in the “showtrials”, a risible term employed by Raja Aziz in the course of remarks made at the launch which was attended by a sizeable crowd of lawyers, Pakatan Rakyat legislators, opposition sympathizers and foreign embassy personnel.
In introductory speeches, both Pawancheek and Raja Aziz recalled aspects of a turbulent time in Malaysian judicial and political history in 1998 and ‘99 when the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim as Deputy President of Umno and Deputy Prime Minister, his detention under the ISA, and indictment and jailing for corruption and sodomy convulsed a whole nation.
Seen in the calm retrospection of the last 10 years, the episodes expose with clarity the perversions to the criminal justice system that accompanied the detention, beating, trial and jailing of Anwar.
In the febrile atmosphere of the particular period, aspects such as then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed’s suggestion that ‘Anwar’s black eye’ (the result of a beating at the hands of the Inspector General of Police, Rahim Noor) was self-inflicted, were difficult to sieve for truth-content.
Absurdity becomes plausible reality
But in the tranquil scrutiny of less perfervid times, the suggestion’s manifest absurdity becomes apparent, enough to induce remorse that one could have thought it plausible at first instance.
Offering another instance of violation of the justice system, Raja Aziz said that the Attorney General should have cited Dr Mahathir for contempt of court when the Prime Minister publicly opined on Anwar’s allegedly defective morals that disqualified him from holding high office even as Anwar’s trial was in progress.
Raja Aziz claimed that anywhere else in the Commonwealth, such contempt would have been arraigned in a court of law.
In his speech at the launch, Anwar delivered a brief disquisition on the rule of law and what must obtain for that rule to be sustainable: a parliament promulgating laws conforming to moral precepts; an executive exercising publicly justifiable power; an independent judiciary unafraid of the executive; and an untrammelled press.
Anwar said that the judiciary went through a mangle with the extirpation of Salleh Abbas, then Lord President, in 1988.
Malaysian judicial history since then has been a series of sordid sequels to the blight of 1988, including recent court decisions handed down in cases arising from the tussle for power in the Perak legislature.
15/09/09
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