On trial, Anwar Ibrahim ignites a struggle for Malaysia's future.
By Dorinda Elliott
Anwar Ibrahim, prisoner, realizes that he is fighting the battle of his
life —
but Anwar Ibrahim, political pro, knows how to play it cool. During a
break in his trial for sodomy and corruption, Malaysia's former deputy
prime minister chats and jokes easily. The black eye that police gave him
in custody has healed, and Anwar is dressed as if for a day at the office
in
his crisp white shirt, well-pressed trousers and black tasseled loafers.
He
munches on dried dates brought by supporters and offers them around —
including to his guard, who declines. With a grin, Anwar quotes Mahatma
Gandhi's philosophy of sharing with everybody. "You see, my philosophy
is different from the boss's," he says. "The boss" is Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad, who sacked him in September. "His philosophy of
economic development is one for you," Anwar says, handing out a date,
"and six for me!" His supporters roar with laughter; even the guard cracks
a smile.
Anwar, of course, is not in charge at all. Mahathir, who has ruled Malaysia
for 17 years, producing rapid growth with an authoritarian hand, is running
this show. Even before Anwar was charged with sodomy and corruption,
Mahathir's supporters had practically convicted him with a barrage of
accusations in the Malaysian press. In a Clintonesque turn of events last
week, prosecution lawyers produced a mattress that they said was stained
with Anwar's semen to supposedly prove his misconduct. If he is found
guilty, Anwar could spend as long as 20 years in prison.
Ugly as the trial is, Malaysians know the real fight is in the political
arena.
It is about the wrath of a conservative old man and the liberal protégé
who
dared to challenge him. It is about the clash between a rebel fighting
the
colonial demons of yesteryear and his would-be successor, a man of the
world who espouses universal values and the global village. Anwar is no
Mahatma Gandhi. He is a wily, determined politician fighting not just for
survival but for power. It is the larger battle that he personifies — between
old and new politics in East Asia, authoritarian and democratic
governments, protected and open economies — that makes him
NEWSWEEK's Asian of the Year. "This is about more than just Anwar.
Democracy is beginning to awaken in this country," says Balwant Singh
Sidhu, a lawyer connected to Anwar's team. "The man in the street is
waking up to the rights of individuals and the system of justice in this
country."
Anwar would be glad to hear that. Ever since his boyhood days in the
dirt-poor Cherok Tokun kampung, or village, where he grew up, Anwar
has preached that education can be the Malays' salvation. "We always felt
he was gifted, so we followed him," says Fazila, 48, a cousin who grew
up
next door. "We were so proud, but now we are crying." Anwar's father, a
hospital technician who became a member of Parliament, taught him to
study hard. "He didn't mingle with the bad hats in town," says a local
religious leader. "He always wanted to talk to the village elders and learn
from them." In the early years of independence, Anwar tested into the elite
Malay College boarding school, known as the Eton of the East. He was
the first boy from his kampung to make it to university.
For a young Malay scholar, those were exciting political times. The British
colonial masters had done little for the Malays, instead cultivating the
Malaysian Chinese as a business class and docile support base. Most
Malays were still living in abject poverty. Anwar organized debates to
discuss social work and the importance of education. According to a local
religious instructor, he was obsessed with the use of Islam as an
educational tool. By the time Anwar went to university, the country was
reeling from race riots in 1969 between poor Malays and the well-to-do
Malaysian Chinese who controlled the economy. "The Malay community
felt left out of mainstream development," says Chandra Muzaffar, a
sociologist who recently joined Malaysia's reform movement. "It was a
time of real soul-searching."
Anwar became a radical student leader, championing Malay interests like
fighting poverty. He was attracted to the ideas of a tough-minded young
politician, Mahathir Mohamad, who had just been expelled from the ruling
party for opposing the party president. Mahathir then wrote the "Malay
Dilemma," arguing the need to overcome passive traditions and develop a
new generation of educated, enterprising Malays. Anwar distributed the
book, and that was the beginning of a long and close relationship.
The young Anwar was just as passionate. In 1974 he was arrested during
a protest against government neglect of poor peasants and spent two years
in jail. Later, as head of an education-oriented Islamic organization called
ABIM, Anwar spoke out for democracy and led a successful fight against
a government move to tighten controls on political activists.
It came as a shock to Anwar's liberal supporters when in 1982 he did an
about-face and joined the ruling party, the United Malays National
Organization (UMNO). Mahathir, who had rejoined the party and just
taken over as prime minister, had lured Anwar into the establishment. "It
was unthinkable," says current ABIM president Ahmad Azam Abdul
Rahman. "[Anwar] explained that ... it was time to manifest (Islam's) ideals
through power." Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, an
ophthalmologist trained in Ireland, says the decision to join the government
was the most difficult moment in Anwar's career. "Anwar is very
pragmatic, and he saw UMNO as a machine that works to fight for his
ideals," she says. "He had to go somewhere, otherwise he'd just be
barking outside and not getting anywhere."
Some Chinese and Indian Malaysians have been alienated by Anwar's
Islamic bent. His wife wears the Islamic tudung scarf; at his house,
women supporters covered from head to toe often stop by to pray,
bowing their heads to the floor. Anwar has encouraged the spread of
Islamic studies and helped introduce an Islamic banking system that avoids
"interest rates" by adding a surcharge to loans. Intellectual supporters
insist
that Anwar's Islam is a tolerant philosophy. "He wanted to create an
Islamic model that can engage with modernization and other religions,"
says ABIM's Ahmad Azam, who was detained and interrogated for 10
days after Anwar's arrest. As Anwar has risen through the system, "his
level of tolerance and understanding of diversity have grown."
Inside the government, Anwar was an outsider, viewed as a radical
interloper by longtime party hacks. He maneuvered for advantage with the
help of Mahathir, bypassing more senior politicians and earning many
enemies along the way. Some old friends say he went along with the worst
of Mahathir's excesses. "He wanted to change the system," says
Hishammudin Rais, a filmmaker who was a student activist with him in the
1970s, "but it was bigger than he was." In the late 1980s, Anwar kept
silent during a judicial crisis, when it was charged that political pressure
led
to the resignation of several Supreme Court judges. When Mahathir
launched Operation Wild Grass, leading to the arrest of 106 dissidents
in
1987, Anwar did nothing. "If he had spoken out, he would have been
crushed much sooner," says one close aide. Wife Azizah agrees: "Even
now, all his strength was still not enough."
Anwar's critics argue that he played crony politics, too. Tycoons betting
he
would someday be in power financed a pro-Anwar think tank. With a
phone call or two from the Ministry of Finance, headed by Anwar, critics
say, they got licenses and bank loans. But even Anwar's opponents
concede that such favoritism was on a tiny scale compared with Mahathir's
crony system. Mahathir had built much of Malaysia's booming economy
on patronage. Loyal businessmen won privatization deals and contracts
that made them multimillionaires overnight. Anwar, by contrast, tried to
play the game without unseemly excesses. He issued a decree to
colleagues that they should reject all applications for special share
allocations and projects from his relatives. In the kampung, his cousins
live
in a ramshackle house, with greasy rags and dead roaches on the kitchen
floor and simple wooden furniture in the tiny living room. A few years
ago
Anwar tried to talk cousin Zulkiefli, 40, out of launching a trading business.
"There's too much hanky-panky in business," Anwar told him. "And you'll
have to take out loans. Why do you need this trouble?" It was Anwar's
indirect way of saying he wouldn't offer any favors. "He had all the
opportunity to abuse power and give money to us, but he didn't," says
Zulkiefli. "Sometimes we even thought, 'Why doesn't he help?' " His
sister's husband, Ismail Aziz, who runs a food stall, rarely even told
strangers that he was Anwar's relative. "If we could drive around in a
fancy Mercedes, then it might be worth saying it," he says. "But nobody
would believe us, so why bother?"
Anwar actually started staking out his differences with Mahathir five years
ago, when he became deputy prime minister. In carefully calibrated
speeches written by a team of liberal intellectuals, Anwar spoke of his
own
ideals. Words like civil society, universal values and freedom crept into
his
messages. Anwar assigned his team to help put together a book called
"Asian Renaissance," a counterargument to Mahathir's "Asian values," the
notion that Western democracy is inappropriate for Asia. Anwar argued
that Asian philosophers, from Confucius to Pakistani philosopher-poet
Mohammad Iqbal and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, believed in
human liberties and democracy. But Anwar wanted to make his mark
without offending his patron. "He would send us off to find books in his
library," says one speechwriter, "all the while worrying what the old man
would think. Could he handle the words 'civil society'? He really valued
his
relationship with Mahathir."
Asia's financial crisis put further strains on the relationship. At the
World
Bank meeting in Hong Kong in September 1997, when Mahathir railed
against the evils of Western speculators, Anwar publicly contradicted him
in hopes of stopping the Malaysian currency's plunge. Anwar opposed
Mahathir's idea of loosening credit to spur a recovery, instead supporting
a
tough monetary policy that would allow bankrupt crony companies to
collapse. "He wanted to use the financial crisis to destroy Mahathir's
cronies," says one supporter. Anwar attempted to block Mahathir's moves
to bail out huge, overextended companies run by his friends.
Anwar's advisers kept urging him to push harder for change. At last
spring's UMNO conference, the rift between Mahathir and Anwar broke
into the open. A book called "Fifty Reasons Why Anwar Cannot Become
Prime Minister," which listed everything from sodomy to spying, was
deposited in each delegate's package, even though Anwar had won a
court order banning its distribution. Anwar's aides pushed him to break
with Mahathir. "We said, look, if you don't do it, your supporters will
say
'What's the use of Anwar, if he does nothing?' " says one associate. Still,
Anwar resisted. "He said, 'Listen, I'm the politician here'." It was only
when Mahathir attacked head-on that Anwar took his cause to the streets.
"I said to Mahathir 'I treat you like a father'," Anwar said after he was
sacked. "But he certainly has not reciprocated that feeling."
The role of dutiful son has never quite suited Anwar. He is an ambitious
politician who miscalculated and fell from grace. But his spirits are high.
In
the courtroom, asked if he will keep up the fight, he raises his fist in
the air
with a smile. His wife says he is rereading George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
and a biography of Abraham Lincoln in jail. "Prison is no bed of roses,"
Anwar himself tells a NEWSWEEK correspondent. Anwar's children miss
the irrepressible father who sings opera in the mornings and playfully
cheats at cards. "Did Dr. M. take away Papa's name tag so he can't go to
work anymore?" his 6-year-old asked recently. He did. But in the
meantime, Anwar has changed his country — and perhaps helped lead
Asia into a more open era in the process. "We are witnessing the
transformation of our political culture," says ABIM's Ahmad Azam.
"Anwar is the sacrificial lamb." Not quite: this lamb is still alive and
kicking.
Newsweek International, Dec. 28, 1998/Jan. 4, 1999