Anwar is like a Renaissance man who likes ‘naked men’, says Utusan

By Shannon Teoh

August 24, 2011

Anwar (left) arrives at the Kuala Lumpur High Court with his wife and PKR president Datuk Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail before delivering his defence statement from the defendant's dock August 22 2011.

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 24 — Utusan Malaysia mocked Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today and likened him to Renaissance era artists such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci who “like fully naked men and handsome young boys.”

Its assistant chief editor Datuk Zaini Hassan wrote in the Umno-owned newspaper that the opposition leader’s “32-page statement was as usual, complete with quotes from the Quran, former South African President Nelson Mandela, Shakespeare and many others,” in reference to Anwar’s unsworn testimony from the dock during his sodomy trial on Monday.

“Anwar wants to be known as The Renaissance Man of the new millennium. He has even written a book called The Asian Renaissance,” Zaini wrote in his Cuit column today.

He stated in the Malay daily that Michaelangelo and Leonardo “like fully naked men and handsome young boys” and asked readers to look up their works, such as the statue of David and the sketch of the Vitruvian Man — both naked depictions — on online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Anwar is currently fighting a sodomy charge levelled against him by his former aide Mohamed Saiful Bukhari Azlan who was 22 when the alleged incident happened in 2008.

The former deputy prime minister said in a nearly two-hour testimony from the dock on Monday that this second sodomy charge was a “conspiracy by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak” and denied ever having sex with Saiful.

PKR later said that its de facto leader’s decision to enter an unsworn statement in his defence was an act of protest against “the legal and political establishment’s” trumped-up charges, following in the footsteps of Mandela, who also took the same course of action when charged with treason in 1963.

But Zaini mocked the Permatang Pauh MP, writing that “Anwar using Mandela’s words? Does he want to be known as the Malayan Mandela?”

“He wants his speech to be in high language, with jargon and philosophy, making reporters dizzy... unlike his former boss Dr Mahathir who would use simple language, whether Malay or English,” he wrote in the Malay daily.

This is the second time Anwar has had to defend himself against sodomy claims, the first coming after he was sacked as deputy prime minister by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 1998.

Although Anwar was convicted of the first sodomy charge, it was overturned by the Federal Court in 2004, allowing him to make a political comeback.

He then lead the opposition pact in denying Barisan Nasional (BN) its customary two-thirds majority of Parliament and five state governments in Election 2008.

Over three years after the allegation first surfaced, Anwar is now entering his defence against the charge which could see the Permatang Pauh MP being jailed for up to 20 years, which will likely end his political career.