WHY DOES DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM GET SPECIAL PRIVILEGES IN PRISON?

M.G.G. Pillai

We are so immured that when the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, and his deputy, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, tells us the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, gets special privileges in prison, we are angry he does.  He is a prisoner.  Why should he get these privileges others do not?  but we miss the point. Yes, he gets the special treatment because the government gives it to him.  Not everyone arrested under the Internal Security Act is blindfolded and handcuffed and honoured by near fatal karate blows on him by no less than the Inspector-General of Police.  No one is sentenced to long terms of imprisonment on unproven charges of sodomy and corruption as he is.  No one is given a special room the size of a studio apartment, as Dato' Abdullah Badawi asserts, with facilities other prisoners can only dream of in Malaysia.  No one can be kept isolated as he is.  It breaks prison regulations.  But he is.  Why?

     Why is the Prime Minister and his deputy blaming him for the special treatment the home miniter has decreed for him?  He is in hospital for a serious medical problem his doctors say could paralysis him if not treated quickly.  He wants treatment overseas, which I understand the government would allow so long as he does not return.  He would want no such thing.  When he was detained under the Internal Security Act in 1973, his friends got him a scholarship to Oxford for a higher degree, but he said he would not so long as the Malaysian government decided he should be in.  When the same group offered the same offer before his arrest in September 1998, he declined, insisting he would not run away as a thief in the night.  If he goes overseas for medical treatment, he would return, as Benigno Aquino did, to perhaps the same fate.

     The Prime Minister and his deputy can rant and rave, but they admit, in private and now reluctantly in public, that it is their nemesis that has the public sympathy. Their political careers depends on what happens to Dato' Seri Anwar. His illness is now so politicised -- the Anwarians did a good job of that -- that any mishap on the operating table would be ipso facto proof of government orders. Those in the Anwar camp invariably point to the trange death of the chairman of Pantai Hospitals, Dato' Wan Adli, of a sinus operation that went sour in his own hospital. They point to the mysterious helicopter crashes in which he was to have travelled, as deputy prime minister, but did not at the last moment.  Or of his Mercedes crashing into a hill in Langkawai.  The rising political clamour amongst his
supporters to have him operated upon overseas keeps the issue alive.  But it is a non-issue.  His doctors believe he is better off with microsurgery, in which the risks of paralysis is miniscule, as against invasive surgery in which it is not.

     That is not all.  Why is he in solitary confinment? Why did the government order that two cameras be installed in his cell -- one trained on the door and the other inside? I understand the prison authorities would not inside the cell, but the other has been.  Why was his cell raided when he was in hospital?  To see if he kept a personal computer or had radio connexions with his supporters outside? Unlike a privileged prisoner, once a crony of the Prime Minister, he does not have a waterbed nor does he leave the prison gates to attend to his business outside.  The home minister decides what privileges he gets.  He could turn the tap off. But if he does, he would face even more opposition.

     The fact is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for all his faults, is now a symbol of what is wrong with Malaysian society.  The government would want nothing better than to have him disappear mysteriously from the face of the earth. And frightened he would.  He should be alive and dead at the same time.  But either sends shivers down many an UMNO spine.  The government cannot even convince his hyperactive supporters he gets special privileges when he gets none. If it cannot, they would continue to keep the Anwar Saga in the public eye.  Dato' Seri Anwar fights for the moral high ground.  If he blinks now, he is finished.  He cannot afford to, even at the cost of his life.  Frankly, it does does not know what to do with him.  Nor what it should do.

M.G.G. Pillai

pillai@mgg.pc.my