By Barani Krishnan

A decade ago, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was on trial for sodomy and corruption in a trial that exposed the seamy side of Malaysian justice and the anxieties of a young country grappling with a crushing financial crisis and civil unrest.

Anwar is Malaysia’s best known political figure, courted in the U.S. and Europe and probably the only man who can topple the government that has led this Southeast Asian country for the past 51 years.

Photo: Anwar Ibrahim, with a bruised eye, at court on Sept 30, 1998 during his his first trial. REUTERS/David Loh

Now the leader of the opposition, will go on trial next week again charged with sodomising a 23-year old male aide. The trial once again looks likely to provide gory evidence and bringing some unwanted attention from the world’s media on this Southeast Asian country of 27 million people. It could also embarrass the government and draw international criticism.

Anwar vowed in a recent interview to fight what he says are trumped up charges.

The 14 months I spent covering the 1998 trials saw Anwar accused of sodomy with three men and having sex with a woman over a period of years. This case is simpler, there is just one accuser. All homosexual acts are illegal in this mainly Muslim country and sex outside marriage is illegal for Muslims.

The first trial was gruelling. Lines began as early as four in the morning as people tried to get into the court that could seat less than 200. Most of the spectators were ordinary people, but there was a sprinkling of dignitaries and businessmen who had known Anwar when he was in office.

There was a separate media queue and again a fight to get in line as dozens of reporters from local and international outlets jockeyed for space. Ringing the court were hundreds of riot police, backed by watercannon, waiting for trouble in a country where there were daily protests at the time, often involving tens of thousands of people.

Once inside the courtroom, things were equally unpredictable. Judge Augustine Paul, plucked from obscurity to oversee Malaysia’s most important criminal trial, won national fame for his oft-repeated response of “not relevant” to evidence introduced by the defence team.

The evidence itself was often contradictory and often bizarre. Ummi Hafilda Ali, a star witness for the prosecution called Anwar a “dog” and prayed that he would contract AIDS. At one stage the prosecution paraded a mattress in and out of the courtroom, saying that semen stains showed Anwar had had sex with a man on it.

One day outside the court, a witch doctor cast a spell, for no apparent reason.

Anwar showed up sporting a black eye that he said had been inflicted on him in prison by the country’s police chief. This time round he says that he was forced to strip and his sexual organs measured in a hospital.

The evidence to be presented by the prosecution this time looks likely to be just as sensational. The malaysianmirror web portal, backed by one of the government parties, said there will be 30 witnesses, a carpet and a video recording, as well as a DNA evidence brought into court.

Anwar’s team, citing two medical reports, says there is no evidence that Saiful Bukhari Azlan was sodomised. Saiful meanwhile has sworn on the Koran that he was and wasn’t best pleased when the charge against Anwar was changed to consensual sex.

One key actor in the whole drama is missing this time round. Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who critics say used the 1998 trial to drive Anwar from office and to humiliate him, is no longer in power. That removes some of the sting.

Even so, incumbent premier Najib Razak attracts plenty of ire from the opposition. He has been forced to deny allegations from the opposition and opposition-supporting websites that he was involved in the lurid murder of a Mongolian model.

The country remains tense in the wake of the 2008 general election in which the government lost its customary two-thirds majority.

Can Anwar survive another trial? Without him, can the opposition prosper and have a real chance of winning at the ballot box  in elections due to be held by 2013. Can Najib survive as prime minister if Anwar remains free and can he implement economic reforms?

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Simon Rabinovitch

When Chinese President Hu Jintao spoke to the nation this week, an unusual six-second pause may have said more about elite politics in this secretive state than the other 90 minutes of
stolid Communist Party rhetoric. In an address marking 30 years of economic reforms, Hu appeared to lose his place in the middle of a sentence, halting awkwardly for 6.5 seconds — the only such break in his speech and an extremely rare bump for Chinese officials long-practised in flawlessly reading out speeches.

When Hu picked up again, he skipped a chunk of the prepared comments, forming a sentence that appears in none of the official transcripts of his speech, nor any Chinese press report. “One
centre”, he said, then went silent before continuing, “is the lifeline of our Party and our nation.” The official transcript read, “one centre and two basic points are mutually linked,
mutually dependent”, a slogan coined in the 1980s in which “one centre” has a purely economic meaning.

In skipping the second part of the slogan, some thought Hu was using “one centre” in a political sense, referring to himself as that nation’s paramount leader. Hu’s pause could have been a simple verbal misstep. But it came in a passage broaching the touchiest of issues for the 65-year-old president, who also serves as Party chief: how much power does he wield and has he
won the “core” status accorded early leaders. And some observers spied a message in Hu’s silence.

Faced with his stiffest challenge yet as the economy slows sharply, Hu may have been trying to stress to the Party that he was still firmly in charge. Even had he lost his place during the address, the “one centre” phrase leads into a slogan repeated so often by Chinese officials that it would be unusual for Hu to have missed its second part. “One centre is the lifeline. It doesn’t imply another way,” said a Chinese scholar, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of talking about the top leadership.

The setting for Hu’s speech, given before ranks of senior officials, retired and in office, seated in the huge Great Hall of the People magnified the potential significance of his comments. The highest-ranking Party officials sat on the stage behind Hu and directly to his rear was Jiang Zemin, Hu’s predecessor as president who still wields huge influence. Hu had paid tribute to Jiang earlier during his speech, using an officially sanctioned phrase to call him “the core of the Party’s third generation of leadership”. The assembled Party members gave Jiang a strong round of applause. Hu, the paramount leader of the so-called fourth generation, is still not referred to as its “core” despite having ascended to the presidency in 2003.

The “one centre” phrase also recalled comments reportedly made by army officials in 2003 when Hu was consolidating his power but Jiang was still chairman of the Central Military Commission. “One centre is called loyalty. Two centres strung together is trouble,” two military delegates to the National People’s Congress, or parliament, told Hu and Jiang, according to the Liberation Army Daily newspaper.

Speculation that the omission in the speech may hint at cracks at the top of China’s leadership pyramid is officially denied and also dismissed by many observers. “Take what is in the People’s
Daily as accurate,” the State Council Information Office, the media arm of the government, told Reuters. The People’s Daily transcript included the text skipped by Hu in his speech, effectively erasing his one-centre-as-lifeline comment.

Jin Zhong, publisher of Hong Kong’s monthly Kaifang, or Open, magazine, said Hu may simply be trying to alter Deng’s “one centre” slogan, looking to replace the second half that he left out with his own views.

What do you think?