ELECTION WATCH (17): DSAI says he's no "Chameleon"

By TERENCE NETTO

PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim met head-on criticisms contained in a widely circulated MCA leaflet portraying him as a chameleon that takes on the colours of a political context in which he happens to be operating.

The unflattering portrait of the PKR leader conveyed by a 4-page leaflet entitled “Disclosing the true face of Anwar” was, according to the fine print on the last page, issued by the party’s headquarters in Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur.

Among other things, the leaflet claimed Anwar was against Lion and dragon dances when he was then Culture, Youth and Sports Minister in 1982; that he decreed the teaching of Chinese and Indian studies in University of Malaya be in Bahasa Malaysia in 1987 when he was Education Minister; and that he placed non-Mandarin speaking administrators in government-run Chinese primary schools.

Responding Anwar said: “The notion that I’m a political chameleon misses things by a mile.”

He elaborated: “Democratic politics is about what can be done given legacies of the past and expectations of the future. You have to see what I said and did while in government against the legacies that prevailed at that time and the expectations that pressed into the bargain.

“Nothing I did and said in the language and cultural spheres were not standard BN-Umno policy and nowhere did I take my championing of any issue to the extent that I waved a keris and called for bloodletting, stirring crowds to emotive outbursts.”

Anwar was referring to the October 1987 Umno Youth-led demonstration at the TPCA Stadium in Kuala Lumpur where a band of Malay leaders, including present Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, harangued the crowd with inflammatory rhetoric.

At that time, the posting of non-Mandarin speaking administrators to government-aided Chinese schools ratcheted up racial tension in the country.

“Those were fraught times and I hold that the distinction one ought to make between a responsible and a chauvinistic leader in that context lay in how you argued your point without inflaming public sentiment.

“I stood on the sane side of that divide while there were others in power today who breached that line with impunity,” he said.

In a low twist, the leaflet accentuates Anwar’s supposedly devious side by superimposing a Chinese theatre facial mask of a dervish on one side of his face on the opening page. The charges leveled at Anwar in the remaining pages reinforced this image of a sinister character, untrustworthy and unprincipled.

“I suppose all is fair and foul in the midst of a high stakes election campaign,” commented Anwar. “But the notion of me as a Malay ultra is a base canard.”

3 Feb 2008