Asian Wall Street Journal 29th June 2000

By LESLIE LOPEZ Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- The marathon sodomy trial of deposed Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim is drawing to a close. But don't expect the political strains generated by the confrontation between the jailed politician and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to ease any time soon.

Malaysian political analysts believe that whatever the trial's outcome, the Anwar affair has hardened the divisions among the country's politically dominant Malays, many of whom abandoned 74-year-old Dr. Mahathir's ruling United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, in November's parliamentary election. The outcome left an unusually fragmented political landscape in this nation of 22 million people that the trial has done little to heal.

"Anwar remains very popular among the Malays. The problem isn't the court case. It is a very emotional issue for the Malays and there is a lot of sympathy for him," notes a chief of a Malaysia strategic economic and political advisory firm. He says that while momentum for Datuk Seri Anwar's reform movement may have lost steam, UMNO still faces an uphill battle to reclaim the disaffected Malay voters. A senior UMNO official acknowledges that "you can't just sweep the [Anwar] issue under the carpet."

Malaysians, particularly the ethnic Malays who form more than 60% of the country's population, have seldom been caught in such a deep political split. Datuk Seri Anwar's sacking from government in September 1998, his beating while in custody by the country's former police chief, and his subsequent trials on corruption and sodomy charges have led many Malaysians to believe the 52-year-old politician's claim that he is a victim of a political conspiracy. Dr. Mahathir's government rejects Datuk Seri Anwar's contention.Pandora's Box

The government, for its part, wants to move Datuk Seri Anwar off the political radar screen. But even Dr. Mahathir is finding it difficult to put the Anwar issue behind him. Presiding over UMNO's annual assembly last month, Dr. Mahathir took time to attack Datuk Seri Anwar anew, retelling in detail how he came to believe that Datuk Seri Anwar was a sexual deviant who had been plotting to unseat him as UMNO president and prime minister.

Jailed or not, Datuk Seri Anwar has become Dr. Mahathir's most potent political foe in his 19 years in power. And the Pandora's box of revelations, allegations and counter-charges opened by Datuk Seri Anwar's trial has stirred debate over the independence and integrity of Malaysia's public institutions, including the judiciary and police.

The more than 100-day sodomy trial has also provided rare behind-the-scenes glimpses of how Malaysia is governed. One revelation, which received scant attention in local media, came from the former chief of Malaysia's Anti-Corruption Agency, Shafie Yahya.

Datuk Shafie told the court that Dr. Mahathir ordered him to close a 1998 investigation into a senior civil servant who was allegedly caught with large amounts of cash in his office.

Datuk Seri Anwar was convicted and sentenced to six years in jail in April 1999, after Malaysia's High Court found him guilty of abusing his power to block a police investigation into allegations that he had engaged in sexual misconduct.

Datuk Seri Anwar is now on trial on a separate charge that he committed sodomy with his wife's former chauffeur, Azizan Abu Bakar. Judge Arifin Jaka has ordered lawyers for the defense and prosecution to submit their closing arguments in writing next week and has said he will give his judgment at "an appropriate time." Conviction on the sodomy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail and a possible flogging.

The prosecution's case has been under attack since it was first presented last June, in part because government lawyers twice amended the sodomy charges against Datuk Seri Anwar. Having initially accused Datuk Seri Anwar of sexual misconduct "one night the month of May in 1994," the state later amended the charge sheet against the former deputy premier on the grounds that the date originally cited was a typing error. The date of the alleged offense was changed to an unspecified night in May 1992. Then, the attorney general's office changed the date of the alleged crime a second time, finally accusing Datuk Seri Anwar of committing sodomy on an unspecified date between January and March 1993.

Defense lawyers claimed that the prosecution's charge was amended the second time because the apartment building where the offense is alleged to have occurred wasn't even furnished for occupancy in May 1992. They also argued in court that the vague three-month time frame contained in the final charge made it difficult for Datuk Seri Anwar to produce alibis to defend himself. Justice Datuk Arifin rejected the defense lawyers' request that the case be dismissed.

The prosecution's case centers on the testimony of Mr. Azizan, a former driver for the Anwar household. Judge Arifin ruled that much of his testimony about his alleged sexual encounters with the former deputy premier be heard in a courtroom closed to the public because of its lurid nature. The prosecution is also relying on a confession while in police custody made by Datuk Seri Anwar's adopted brother, Sukma Darmawan Sasmitatmadja, who is being tried for abetting the alleged sodomy against Mr. Azizan.

Mr. Sukma's confession was obtained while he was detained by police in September 1998 on suspicion that he was having a homosexual relationship with Datuk Seri Anwar. He subsequently confessed to a magistrate to having sexual relations with the politician, was convicted for sodomy and sentenced to six months in prison.

But during cross-examination by the defense in Datuk Seri Anwar's current trial, Mr. Sukma said that his confession had been coerced after more than 80 hours of police interrogation. Mr. Sukma testified that police threatened him, telling him how easy it was to hire professional assassins.

For his part, Datuk Seri Anwar has maintained that he is innocent and insists that he is a victim of a top-level government conspiracy engineered to prevent him from challenging Dr. Mahathir. The jailed politician offered alibis for almost all of the roughly 90 days specified by the prosecution as the possible time frame for the alleged offense. He testified in court that he was traveling in Europe, giving dinners for Islamic scholars or watching a Disney ice-skating show in Kuala Lumpur on some of the evenings he is accused of sodomizing his wife's driver.

To attempt to prove their political conspiracy allegation, defense lawyers first grilled Mr. Azizan, who told the court that he had been instructed by the police to amend the date of his alleged sexual encounter with Datuk Seri Anwar. They then produced several other witnesses, one of whom testified that he was promised money by a Malaysian diplomat to smear Datuk Seri Anwar's name and make allegations that he had procured "boys and girls" for the politician. The defense tried to force Dr. Mahathir to testify, but Judge Arifin ruled against it. His ruling is being appealed to a higher court.

The case got another jolt two weeks ago when Datuk Seri Anwar's lawyers attempted to establish that there was "bad blood" between Dr. Mahathir and his one-time heir apparent. The former chief of Malaysia's Anti-Corruption Agency, Datuk Shafie, testified that Dr. Mahathir had ordered him to stop investigating a senior civil servant who the premier later appointed as the country's central bank governor.

Datuk Shafie testified that his agency had discovered large amounts of cash in the office of Ali Abul Hassan Sulaiman, who, at the time, was chief of the Economic Planning Unit, a powerful agency in the Prime Minister's department. The planning unit, among other things, oversees Malaysia's privatization program. Datuk Shafie said he was "told off" by Dr. Mahathir during a meeting in June 1998. "How dare you raid my senior officer's office?" Datuk Shafie quoted Dr. Mahathir as saying, adding that the premier had also asked him whether he was acting on Datuk Seri Anwar's instructions. "I said, 'No, it was based on an official complaint,' " Datuk Shafie told the court, adding that he was then directed to close the investigation by Dr. Mahathir. (Tan Sri Ali Abul Hassan was appointed central-bank governor in September 1998 and retired from the post two months ago.)

Datuk Seri Anwar's lawyers say Datuk Shafie's testimony went largely unchallenged by the prosecution.