KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 — Putrajaya is among regimes that have embraced tactics modelled after Singapore’s success of using lawsuits and prosecution to “hound” rivals into oblivion, said The Economist.
In an article under the Banyan section that covers issues in Asia, the business newsweekly said the method was favoured by authoritarian governments as it both allows them to avoid direct confrontations and “foster the impression that you are moving towards ‘the rule of law’.”
When US President Barack Obama arrived here for a landmark visit last month — the first since Lyndon B. Johnson’s in 1966 — he had expressed concerns over Malaysia’s conviction of its opposition leader, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, of a sodomy charge, coincidentally the latter’s second.
Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had then disavowed his administration’s involvement, as he has done since the complaint first surfaced in 2009, insisting that the matter was purely a criminal case before the courts.
“Yet it was the government’s own appeal which led to Mr Anwar’s earlier acquittal being overturned,” The Economist highlighted.
“He is the figurehead who unites a diverse opposition torn at present by disagreement over the plan of one of its components, an Islamic party, to introduce fierce hudud punishments, such as amputations, in Kelantan, a state it governs. His disappearance into jail would be most damaging.”
Anwar is viewed as the glue that binds the ideologically disparate parties of DAP, PAS, and PKR that form Pakatan Rakyat, an informal albeit formidable opposition pact to Najib’s ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.
The conviction that led to a five-year jail sentence being handed down in an unusually late hearing by the appellate court also coincidentally disqualified Anwar from contesting the Kajang by-election just days before nomination, effectively scuttling his aim then of becoming Selangor mentri besar.
It also barred him from contesting to lead his PKR party in its on-going election; he is currently de facto leader.
The Economist then pointed to the continued existence of the Sedition Act, two years after Putrajaya first promised — and continues to promise — that it will repeal the colonial era law that critics contend is abused to silence political dissent.
Last week, yet another opposition lawmaker, DAP’s Teresa Kok, was charged under the law, after pro-government supporters accused her of mocking the government’s leaders and institutions in a video satire in conjunction with Chinese New Year in February.
The late Karpal Singh, then the national chairman of DAP, was also convicted with sedition last February for saying that the Perak Sultan’s actions in the 2009 state constitutional crisis could be questioned in a court of law.
Despite the apparent efficacy, The Economist noted that success with the strategy that allowed Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew to bury political opponents in lawsuits that ended some of their carriers, may be unique to the island-state due to its circumstances.
“One is that Singapore is an international city seen as under the rule of law. Its courts are respected, if not always the use the government has made of them.
“The other is that many Singaporeans are turning against the PAP, which is even trying to change its image,” it added.
Malaysia’s judiciary has remained under a cloud since the 1988 constitutional crisis that saw the dismissal of then-Lord President of the Supreme Court, Tun Salleh Abbas, during the administration of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Salleh’s removal is widely viewed as the point at which Malaysia’s judiciary began to lose its independence.
In 2008, de facto law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim prompted the administration to tender an open apology to Salleh and the judges affected by the so-called judicial crisis.
“We should seek forgiveness. In the eyes of the world, the judicial crisis has weakened our judiciary system,” Zaid reportedly said then.
Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, when announcing ex-gratia payments in 2008 to Salleh and the six Supreme Court judges who lost their seats on the bench, had conceded that the judiciary crisis was one that continues to haunt the nation.
The position of Lord President no longer exists, superseded by the rank of Chief Justice, while Malaysia also replaced the Supreme Court with the Federal Court in 1994.
