IN response to Julia Yeow’s op-ed on the hero worship of Anwar Ibrahim, I would like to add a different view.

Anwar is not an enigma. Books and scores of interviews have been conducted on, with, and about him. 

Sometimes, Anwar speaks in first person narrative, too: “Do they think they can force Anwar Ibrahim to crawl to them? No way. We shall fight and we will prevail.”  

May 9 was not a general election about Anwar Ibrahim. But his prediction came true. Such prescience, invariably, gave him the right to speak with a firmer and louder voice, since it was practically a voice that reflected unstinting belief in the people.

Without Anwar, Malaysian scholars and laity alike could have invoked someone else as the leader of the movement against the kleptocracy of Najib Razak. In a way, Malaysians were spoilt for choice. 

Aside from Dr Mahathir Mohamad, we could look up to other political detainees to match the electoral moments on May 9 with the pain and incarceration that they went through. Be it Mohamad Sabu, Lim Guan Eng, Lim Kit Siang, and many more, all had had to spend many a nights in prison. All were given a chance to run and hold office. Why not Anwar who suffered more?

But any attempt not to reflect deeply on Anwar’s career, invariably peaks and valleys, would have been a wasted intellectual and spiritual moment, too. 

Here was a man who stared at the state and did not blink. In the phone call to Anwar on the night of May 9, there was clearly an attempt by Najib to cut a deal with him, too.

But when Anwar referred the issue back to Dr Mahathir, Najib was in a state of shock, as Anwar explained to Thai interviewer Sutichai Yoon just a week ago.

The fact is politics in a Third World democracy, as Mohamad once called it, is fraught with mortal risks, that could cost one’s life, freedom, potentially, a wipeout of the whole family, too. 

Anwar faced all of that, sometimes alone (in solitary confinement), other times collectively with his family writ large. 

Such courage is both rare and precocious. Thus Anwar deserves an effect short of seeing him as a saint with a halo over the head. But he deserves our utmost reverence to say the least.

This should be our moral stance precisely because the bravery he showed was deeply acute and non-acquiescing.

In this sense, Anwar deserves to be seen, not through one optic – which is hero worship – but several vantage points. 

First of all, the total time served in prison was 10½ years, which is roughly two elections, and a tad more. 

When a man has been denied the right to represent the people and the nation whom he believes, and have faith in, then perhaps the normal rules of engagement can indeed be bent.

Not for him. But for his acts of audacity under sheer pressure, in addition to total persecution and prejudice. 

So, if Anwar wants to run for office again for the parliamentary session in October 2018, why not cut him some slack? The Agong did, which is why he was released earlier, invariably, on the “miscarriage of justice”, too.

Second, if (political) prison time cannot be the benchmark to allow a person to run for office as soon as possible, then the regime that put him there in the first place has won. 

The whole goal and aim of Barisan National and subsequently Najib was to subject him to a life that was “violent, solitary and brutish”.

On May 9, we refused to be prodded like cattle. We fought back. Along the way, we managed to spring Anwar out alive, too. 

Third, Anwar has insisted time and again that sheer focus on narrow Bumiputera agenda cannot work. 

If it did, Dr Muhammad Khalid would not have produced a book where the described essentially a country whose income gaps do cut across all races and groups without fail since 1957-2018. 

Anwar is the only one who has consistently spoken of the perils of the chasm of the income gap, often by invoking the Gini co-efficiency. 

We need a leader whose singular goal is to close the income gap. And if the process involves a bit of cheer leading that may be seen as hero worship, when it is merely a prolonged process of positive reinforcement of a brave man, then it is the optic that may be flawed, not the apparent attempt to return to Parliament.

In all, no Malaysian prime minister has been named ahead of time. Since Anwar is the exception, the politics surrounding him must by nature be seen through the context of extraordinary circumstances, too. – September 11, 2018.

* Phar Kim Beng reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.