[ Laman Ehwal Semasa ReformIS ]
Date: 13 Sep 1999
Time: 20:50:11
Remote User: -
ACT URGENTLY !
The Universiti Kebangsaan Medical Faculty experts have confirmed the finding of 77 per cent higher than normal levels of arsenic on the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in tests conducted after he was admitted last Friday. There is no official confirmation of this report tonight (12 Sept), but the only way to put this matter to rest would be a test in public, perhaps before a Royal Commission, which now must be set up to put this matter to rest once and for all.
This throws more mud on the government's face over its handling of the Anwar imbroglio. When Dato' Seri Anwar's counsel, Mr Karpal Singh, announced the arsenic poisoning to a shocked court on Friday, the Attorney-General, Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah blamed Dato' Seri Anwar's wife of poisoning him. The Prime Minister followed with supercillious remarks which suggested that his nemesis had inflicted this on himself. He said as such when Dato' Seri Anwar appeared in public during his detention with a black eye: but it was the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Rahim Noor, who did it. The minister for international trade and industry minister, Datin Rafidah Aziz, accused him of clamouring for cheap publicity and wanting to destroy the APEC session in New Zealand, where she made this remarks. The parrots in the Cabinet are horrified that anyone in the cabinet would want to do such a dastardly thing, although no one accused the cabinet of having done it.
No one in government has addressed how he came to be inflicted with fatal doses of arsenic in a high-security state prison where he is so tightly monitored that four cameras monitor his every movement. Instead the family is accused of withholding the report. It did not. His wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, said: "Anwar's urine sample was sent (under an assumed name) to the Kuala Lumpur branch of Gribbles Pathology Malaysia on 18 August 18 August. Gribbles Pathology Melbourne, Australia, tested the sample on 26 August." The test was sent back to Kuala Lumpur on 8 September. She was given it the next day, and Mr Karpal Singh announced it on Friday. The report also says the ingestion of arsenic was neither accidental or suicidal, but systematic. That would suggest someone deliberately wanted to poison him to death. Who would want to do that except some one high in government or industry or both who could find a living Anwar injurious to his freedom? Who could that be? So, the breast-beating explanations of the National Front coalition leaders of cabinet ministers not involving themselves in murder is neither here nor there. One cabinet minister did send time in jail for murder 15 years ago. In 1964, a PAS candidate for the state assembly of Kelantan, Samad Gul, was killed in what is said to be a political vendetta and in whose death a prominent UMNO figure was linked with.
The Prime Minister's supercillious remarks, and tha of his acolytes, does him no credit, puts Malaysia even more at risk internationally. Despite the exuberant confidence of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah expects general elections in November, this latest episode in the Macbethian tragedy drains support away from the Prime Minister and the governing National Front. A 5,000-crowd at the National Mosque marched to the Istana Negara yesterday afternnon, and turned back when prevented by barricades of policemen. Tonight, a crowd estimated in the 40,000s gathered at the headquarters of PAS in a Kuala Lumpur suburb to protest at the government's handling of the affair. The Prime Minister loses ground further in this year-long attempt to destroy his former protege.
It is necessary, if the government wants to regain at least some of its lost ground to not stand in Dato' Seri Anwar's fresh application for bail. The defence lawyers should reapply for bail as soon as possible, the Attorney-General should not object, and, if necessary, release Dato' Seri Anwar to house arrest. His wife's political party, KeADILan, meanwhile, has urged the high court to grant bail in view of Anwar's life being in "mortal danger". The government's options on this reduce by the day. It appears to have realised the pickle it is in. Instead of a normal prisoner's hospital bed, he is now put in an executive room, where he has been since his admission last Friday, though he was not unconscious and in intensive care as I had reported. Why this special treatment after a year of humiliation and worse?
M.G.G. Pillai pillai@mgg.pc.my