I have written about the long and complicated sexual, political, religious and legal conflict between Anwar Ibrahim, once Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and slated for eventual rule and his mentor nemesis Mahatir Mohammad, now former Prime Minister of Malaysia (Larry Catá Backer, Emasculated Men, Effeminate Law in the United States, Zimbabwe and Malaysia, 17 Yale J. L. & Feminism 1 (2005)).
In the late 1990s, Mahatir was said to fear both a political challenge from Anwar Ibrahim, his all but anointed successor and deputy prime minister and the likelihood that Anwar would expose Mahatir’s connection to matters that might be characterized as corrupt. On the eve of that challenge, Anwar Ibrahim found himself the victim of a turnabout noteworthy for its audacity, perversity and irony. Conflating sexual, political, and legal corruption, Anwar Ibrahim—who had built his reputation, in part, on his religious credentials—found himself accused of sodomy and political corruption, stripped of his political position, and thrown in jail.
The Anwar trail was notorious for the fervor with which the government sought to extract confession and impose penance. Law, in the form of the courtroom, served as the site of a great morality play in which corruption was exposed in all of its manifestations, in which the tie between moral and political corruption was highlighted, and in which the value of appropriate conduct was emphasized, while the fate of the transgressor was magnified. Anwar provided the perfect victim for this ritual. Anwar was exposed precisely because he reflected critical contradictions – a moralist in a government he accused of immorality, a man committed to Islam condemning intolerance in religious matters. The trial was theater of a sort—as effective a means of communicating norms as the posting of judicial stories on the Internet. (Backer, supra.).
Eventually the sodomy convictions were overturned, by the Malay courts refused to reconsider the validity of the corruption verdicts, a position that had immediate political effect since that conviction prevented Anwar from holding office until 2008. If nothing else, this inconsistency exposed the close connection between the related manifestations of corruption in the earlier trials, as well as their primary political goals—to keep Anwar out of politics as long as possible. Anwar was released in 2004 and has since been the darling of the international elite. One gets a sense of his increasing global visibility through news of him in the web site dedicated to Anwar.
Mahatir’s political fortunes profited from this saga of socio-religious adventurism. He was able to remain in office and retire on his own terms.
But irony continues to define the relationship between these two men. As Mahatir sinks further into retirement, he has discovered that Anwar’s star continues to rise, and Anwar’s influence in Malay politics increases. In contrast, his own influence decreases. A recent article in the New York Times (Seth Mydans, “Once Powerful Malaysian Grumbles to Press He Controlled,” New York Times, July 5, 2006 at A3) setails the frustrations of the former Prime Minister in asserting influence even with his hand picked successor. Ironically enough, it is now Anwar Ibrahim who has become the more influential political figure, recently warning Malays to be wary of possible coup plot by Mahatir and his party faithful.
But the bigger irony returns us to the commencement of the battle between these two men—corruption in its many forms. Now, the tables have been turned. Anwar’s defamation suit against Mahatir is proceeding. More importantly, Anwar is now making no effort to hide his accusations of corruption against Mahatir. Anwar has been especially eager to relate evidence of corruption from Mahatir’s time in office.
What does the future hold for Mahatir? In a world guided by the principle of balance and vengeance, one might expect to see a trial for corruption in Mahtir’s future. That sort of trial would certainly serve as a necessary foundation for the rehabilitation of Anwar in Malay political society. In any case, Anwar has already tainted Mahatir (if only barely indirectly) with a greater sort of corruption as this passage from a speech delivered in 2005:
When the law is subjugated to the tyranny of politics, the administration of justice becomes both farcical and perverse. And the consequences are harsh and cruel. In a true democracy, the use of judicial high handedness to bring down a political opponent can be checked by a transparent court system and a process of accountability. In a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy, however, where the judges are subservient to the political masters, judicial highhandedness is given free rein and transparency is conspicuous by its absence. Those prosecuted for political reasons are thus condemned even before the trial begins. Instead of being the ultimate guardians of our liberty from executive tyranny, the judiciary is then transformed into principals in the destruction of the very process they were entrusted to protect. I say this not so much to inculpate judges per se, but rather as an indictment against those politicians who are so obsessed with holding on to power that they won’t think twice about destroying the foundations of judicial independence. Anwar Ibrahim, Law and Politics, A Personal Perspective, speech delivered at the Lawasia Conference, Goldcoast, Queensland, Australia, March 2005.
Anwar means to paint Mahatir with the same moral/religious and legal corruption with which he was painted in the 1990s. Tit for tat. But Anwar is not crude. He understands his international audience. No sex this time. Moral corruption takes the high road and strikes at a target with much more impact in the West—economic globalization. Mahatir’s brand of political corruption is used to intensify the effect of the related economic corruption which its necessary consequence. Thus, in the same speech, Anwar suggests “And where judges are not seen to be absolutely above board, the establishment of equity and fair play in commercial and economic deliberations will be largely illusory. This would also partly explain why Malaysia continues to occupy dismal positions in the corruption index.” (Anwar Ibrahim, supra). And this is a form of corruption that has, like sex, a religiously intensifying effect as well.
Thus the great perversity of this continuing drama: in many ways Anwar and Mahatir are birds of a feather, they are different faces of the same socio-legal normative structure in which the moral is conflated with and intensifies the legal, in which the political and social are inseparable. Both are also men who continue to take risks. For Mahtir, the risk involves a continuing involvement in politics and business. For Anwar, it is sex and religion. Consider a speech delivered at Georgetown University earlier in 2006 in which Anwar, referring to the great flowering of Ommayyad Spain spoke of the diffusion of erotica by translation. “With due respect to my Jesuit friends, I have no quarrel with those profane literature or medieval erotica from the Islamic world. In fact it only attested to the virility and fecundity of the much maligned and stereotyped Muslim mind.” (Anwar Ibrahim, Towards Freedom and Good Governance, speech given at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., February 6, 2006).
At the end of the day sex may well dog Anwar the way economic corruption will likely dog Mahatir. Both serve as the great Achilles heel to their political ambitions in a country whose Islam is no longer the tolerate version of an all too brief Umayyad Spain, the flower of which was as much crushed by Islamic reactionaries as the Christian reconquista. It is thus with a bit of unconscious irony, perhaps, that while praising the Umayyad Spanish renaissance he condemns himself to the same fate as one its its greatest flowers, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), whose work was burned and whose thinking was condemned by growing religious fundamentalism. “The desire for freedom is a universal quest. And I reiterate that the one thing that I learned from my incarceration is the meaning of and the passion for freedom.” (Anwar Ibrahim, Georgetown speech, supra.). It is possible that this passion will continue to cost him dearly.
In the late 1990s, Mahatir was said to fear both a political challenge from Anwar Ibrahim, his all but anointed successor and deputy prime minister and the likelihood that Anwar would expose Mahatir’s connection to matters that might be characterized as corrupt. On the eve of that challenge, Anwar Ibrahim found himself the victim of a turnabout noteworthy for its audacity, perversity and irony. Conflating sexual, political, and legal corruption, Anwar Ibrahim—who had built his reputation, in part, on his religious credentials—found himself accused of sodomy and political corruption, stripped of his political position, and thrown in jail.
The Anwar trail was notorious for the fervor with which the government sought to extract confession and impose penance. Law, in the form of the courtroom, served as the site of a great morality play in which corruption was exposed in all of its manifestations, in which the tie between moral and political corruption was highlighted, and in which the value of appropriate conduct was emphasized, while the fate of the transgressor was magnified. Anwar provided the perfect victim for this ritual. Anwar was exposed precisely because he reflected critical contradictions – a moralist in a government he accused of immorality, a man committed to Islam condemning intolerance in religious matters. The trial was theater of a sort—as effective a means of communicating norms as the posting of judicial stories on the Internet. (Backer, supra.).
Eventually the sodomy convictions were overturned, by the Malay courts refused to reconsider the validity of the corruption verdicts, a position that had immediate political effect since that conviction prevented Anwar from holding office until 2008. If nothing else, this inconsistency exposed the close connection between the related manifestations of corruption in the earlier trials, as well as their primary political goals—to keep Anwar out of politics as long as possible. Anwar was released in 2004 and has since been the darling of the international elite. One gets a sense of his increasing global visibility through news of him in the web site dedicated to Anwar.
Mahatir’s political fortunes profited from this saga of socio-religious adventurism. He was able to remain in office and retire on his own terms.
But irony continues to define the relationship between these two men. As Mahatir sinks further into retirement, he has discovered that Anwar’s star continues to rise, and Anwar’s influence in Malay politics increases. In contrast, his own influence decreases. A recent article in the New York Times (Seth Mydans, “Once Powerful Malaysian Grumbles to Press He Controlled,” New York Times, July 5, 2006 at A3) setails the frustrations of the former Prime Minister in asserting influence even with his hand picked successor. Ironically enough, it is now Anwar Ibrahim who has become the more influential political figure, recently warning Malays to be wary of possible coup plot by Mahatir and his party faithful.
But the bigger irony returns us to the commencement of the battle between these two men—corruption in its many forms. Now, the tables have been turned. Anwar’s defamation suit against Mahatir is proceeding. More importantly, Anwar is now making no effort to hide his accusations of corruption against Mahatir. Anwar has been especially eager to relate evidence of corruption from Mahatir’s time in office.
What does the future hold for Mahatir? In a world guided by the principle of balance and vengeance, one might expect to see a trial for corruption in Mahtir’s future. That sort of trial would certainly serve as a necessary foundation for the rehabilitation of Anwar in Malay political society. In any case, Anwar has already tainted Mahatir (if only barely indirectly) with a greater sort of corruption as this passage from a speech delivered in 2005:
When the law is subjugated to the tyranny of politics, the administration of justice becomes both farcical and perverse. And the consequences are harsh and cruel. In a true democracy, the use of judicial high handedness to bring down a political opponent can be checked by a transparent court system and a process of accountability. In a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy, however, where the judges are subservient to the political masters, judicial highhandedness is given free rein and transparency is conspicuous by its absence. Those prosecuted for political reasons are thus condemned even before the trial begins. Instead of being the ultimate guardians of our liberty from executive tyranny, the judiciary is then transformed into principals in the destruction of the very process they were entrusted to protect. I say this not so much to inculpate judges per se, but rather as an indictment against those politicians who are so obsessed with holding on to power that they won’t think twice about destroying the foundations of judicial independence. Anwar Ibrahim, Law and Politics, A Personal Perspective, speech delivered at the Lawasia Conference, Goldcoast, Queensland, Australia, March 2005.
Anwar means to paint Mahatir with the same moral/religious and legal corruption with which he was painted in the 1990s. Tit for tat. But Anwar is not crude. He understands his international audience. No sex this time. Moral corruption takes the high road and strikes at a target with much more impact in the West—economic globalization. Mahatir’s brand of political corruption is used to intensify the effect of the related economic corruption which its necessary consequence. Thus, in the same speech, Anwar suggests “And where judges are not seen to be absolutely above board, the establishment of equity and fair play in commercial and economic deliberations will be largely illusory. This would also partly explain why Malaysia continues to occupy dismal positions in the corruption index.” (Anwar Ibrahim, supra). And this is a form of corruption that has, like sex, a religiously intensifying effect as well.
Thus the great perversity of this continuing drama: in many ways Anwar and Mahatir are birds of a feather, they are different faces of the same socio-legal normative structure in which the moral is conflated with and intensifies the legal, in which the political and social are inseparable. Both are also men who continue to take risks. For Mahtir, the risk involves a continuing involvement in politics and business. For Anwar, it is sex and religion. Consider a speech delivered at Georgetown University earlier in 2006 in which Anwar, referring to the great flowering of Ommayyad Spain spoke of the diffusion of erotica by translation. “With due respect to my Jesuit friends, I have no quarrel with those profane literature or medieval erotica from the Islamic world. In fact it only attested to the virility and fecundity of the much maligned and stereotyped Muslim mind.” (Anwar Ibrahim, Towards Freedom and Good Governance, speech given at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., February 6, 2006).
At the end of the day sex may well dog Anwar the way economic corruption will likely dog Mahatir. Both serve as the great Achilles heel to their political ambitions in a country whose Islam is no longer the tolerate version of an all too brief Umayyad Spain, the flower of which was as much crushed by Islamic reactionaries as the Christian reconquista. It is thus with a bit of unconscious irony, perhaps, that while praising the Umayyad Spanish renaissance he condemns himself to the same fate as one its its greatest flowers, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), whose work was burned and whose thinking was condemned by growing religious fundamentalism. “The desire for freedom is a universal quest. And I reiterate that the one thing that I learned from my incarceration is the meaning of and the passion for freedom.” (Anwar Ibrahim, Georgetown speech, supra.). It is possible that this passion will continue to cost him dearly.
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