brave enough
to confront
them or none at all if we are foolish enough to pretend they never
happened. The wise ones look back with the eye of hindsight
hoping to learn from the past, disturbing though it may be while foolish
ones who prefer to cocoon themselves in the complacency of the present are
doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past again and again.
So it is that in Malaysia, the political, social and legal turmoil caused
by the sacking of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim
and his subsequent trial will forever be etched into our national
consciousness with deep scars of shame and regret that will not easily
heal. Future generations of Malaysians will look back aghast at how we
could have allowed it to happen, how we could have permitted one man to
subvert and manipulate all our cherished instruments of democracy to serve
his personal agenda of demolishing a political enemy. That he had overseen
most of Malaysia's economic development is no excuse to drag the nation
into moral bankruptcy and ride roughshod over universal concepts of truth,
justice, honour, morality or even common decency. That man is of course
Dr. Mahathir Mohamed who sacked his ex-Deputy and heir apparent Anwar
Ibrahim in an ignominious saga that will forever be a blot on the nation's
history and a destruction of his own personal legacy. The nation was also
robbed of an extraordinary leader who could have led Malaysia shinning
into the next millennium. Perhaps in hindsight we will see that we have
put ourselves in grave danger by allowing Mahathir to grab and consolidate
for himself too much power and we have been too trusting that such power
will not be abused.
But abused it was from the unlawful sacking of Anwar Ibrahim on Sept 2
1998 without the prior approval of the King to the staging of the
subsequent show trial. He was sacked for alleged moral indecency and
accused of everything under the sun from adultery, sodomy, corruption and
abuse of power to economic sabotage and being a foreign agent for good
measure. A few days later Mahathir moved to expel him from the United
Malay National Organisation party. That it was more than a moral issue is
evident as no individual has ever been expelled from UMNO for moral
crimes. Under UMNO's feudalistic patronage system, loyalty to the leader
is of paramount importance and no amount of corruption, moral decay or
dereliction of duty is reason for expulsion so long as loyalty to the
leader is maintained.