Anwar finesses a shod-dy state

For a fleeting while, humble footwear - not diamond rings or luxury wristwatches - sparked attention as Pakatan Rakyat supremo Anwar Ibrahim was stumping Batu Maung, one of five stops in the indefatigable campaigner’s one-day swing through Penang yesterday. 

The episode may have been trite, but in the way it played out, it had ripples of resonance for the overall scheme of things in these days of an imminent general election.

Anwar (right) had just ascended a low platform to begin his speech when a member of the audience (these days, his security finds it hard to keep the eager from milling close to the stage) noticed that the PKR adviser wore a sandal on one foot, while the other was shod in a shoe.

“Yes-lah, you must know I’m an ordinary person,” parried Anwar, nimbly fielding a curious onlooker’s inquiry. 

“I’m not like Najib who has people to cater for him,” chortled Anwar, transmuting embarrassment into minor triumph.

Hurrying from one function to another and having arrived at PKR state executive councilor’s Abdul Malik Abul Kassim’s Chinese New Year open house in Batu Maung following prayers at a mosque in nearby Pantai Jerejak, it wasn’t hard to infer how he got his footwear mixed-up.

A man with a hectic speaking schedule such as his would conceivably lack the presence of mind about such trifles like congruent footwear.

A little later when gently twitting Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak (right) over the latter’s fumble at the Penang BN’s CNY bash on Monday where the BN chairman failed to distinguish the crowd’s desire for world-class entertainment from its support for the coalition, Anwar’s rhetorical agility over his incongruent footwear stood him in comparatively good stead.  

It was a nice little primer, perhaps, on how to turn incipient embarrassment to self-advantage.

Just shoes?

The aware know that in the long catalogue of national campaigns here and abroad, footwear - its poor state or mix-ups about it - are not items of inconsequential import.

There is an iconic image of Adlai Stevenson (right), the Democratic candidate in the 1952 United States presidential campaign, sitting cross-legged on a campaign platform while presumably looking through notes for a speech, with a hole on the sole of his shoe visible for the world to see.

The image, a reflection of the man’s fetching lack of self-consciousness, has carved a quaint and imperishable niche in campaign lore.

In the way he waged his campaign against war hero and eventual winner, the Republican Dwight Eisenhower, Stevenson - in 1952, and then again in 1956 - won worldwide respect for his decency, elevation and humour, mainly of the self-deprecating sort.

Rather like someone we know, nearer to our times and home.