Anwar....Not guilty!

by Dr Hsu 

I am pleasantly surprised that Anwar was aquitted. Perhaps after all, the judiciary is now much more independent than before.

The judge must be congratulated to come out with a ruling that gives the benefits of the doubt to the accused. Indeed for those who have followed the case, there are many doubtful points in the prosecution’s case, and as the judge has ruled, since he cannot be sure that the DNA sample is not contaminated, the accused has to be set free.

The perception that most people have held is that this as  political persecution. If indeed it is so, then it is really unfortunate, not only to Anwar Ibrahim who has to spend so much of his time preparing for his defence so much so that he is only half as effective as before politically. But it is also unfortunate for BN, since this is like a knife  that will ‘cut’ them no matter how the verdict is.

If the verdict is guilty, Bn will probably get a backlash and like in 1999, there will be sympathy and angry votes in favour of PR. If the verdict is not guilty, then many people will view this a a frame up. In either case, it is a no win situation.

Now that Anwar is free, and the ‘lion’ (some called him chamelon) is once again free to roam, AI should concentrate on gaining the rural votes. The urban votes are more or less  PR’s. But just with urban votes, it is insufficient to win. There must be sufficient rural support, as well as some support from East Malaysia for PR to win.

I applaud PAS decision to sack H. Ali. He has been shooting PAs feet all these while, and with him out of the picture, PAS will be able to present a more moderate ‘facade’ , which is necessary if PR is to rule.

Over to the DAP, the godfathers and the warlords have  closed rank. Whether it is temporary or not is immaterial; they must have realised that they need to close rank to fight  the most important battle of their lives.. If they split, they will just be doing an injustice to themselves and a service to the other side.

I hope that at this juncture, the top and second echelon leaders of PR should be careful about what they do and what they say. Any misstep now would definitely be exploited. They should at all cost avoid any pitfalls which may put their parties in difficult positions. The light is now visible at the end of the tunnel and they should just proceed carefully towards the lights, and avoid anything that may smash the lighting.