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Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s Mini-Mahathir, Isn’t ‘Father of the Nation’

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Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s Mini-Mahathir, Isn’t ‘Father of the Nation’

The Malaysian leader’s response to recent developments in the 1MDB corruption scandal was tone-deaf and dismissive.

Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s Mini-Mahathir, Isn’t ‘Father of the Nation’

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim shakes hands with a supporter during a visit to Penang, Malaysia, November 2, 2024.

Credit: Facebook/Anwar Ibrahim

If you want an example of just how self-pitying and draconian Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has become, give ear to his response late last month to Najib Razak’s prison “apology.” I’ve tried to find a few versions of his same remarks so as to check he wasn’t being unfairly translated. The South China Morning Post quoted him thus:

“Najib made a statement, ‘I apologize for what happened with 1MDB’ and so on…I’m the prime minister, the father of the nation. When someone says that, what can I do? I said we received it well.”

Malaysia Now reported it as, “I am the prime minister, I am the father of the nation…This man said something, what do you want me to do? I said we welcome it.”

The Star offered a lengthy section of the speech he delivered on October 27:

“I am the Prime Minister, I am the ‘bapa negara’ (father of the nation). When someone offers their apology, what do you want me to do? So I said that the apology is well received but then we have certain people saying they cannot accept it. What sort of behavior is this?”

Despite the translation differences, three main points are consistent. Anwar sees himself as “the father of the nation.” He thinks he has the right to accept Najib’s “apology” on behalf of the people. And he’s happy to speak down to the people who have refused to accept Najib’s “apology.” Indeed, what most of these reports missed was another of his comments. People who disagreed with Anwar’s willingness to take Najib at his word were “bebal” (slow-witted), he said.

Unless I’m mistaken, the prime minister of Malaysia is a servant of the people – an elected representative. He isn’t a “father of the nation” nor, indeed, the sole pardoner of political sins. One should view any politician who speaks of being a “father” of the people with maximum mistrust. As much opprobrium should be reserved for politicians who regard it their job to tell the masses how to think. Especially how to think about the country’s most serious moral crisis in recent history.

It wasn’t as if Anwar was personally affected by the 1MDB scandal. One could say that his political fortunes were greatly improved by it. The same cannot be said of ordinary Malaysians – the “slow-witted,” in the PM’s words – some of whom lost money directly and the vast majority of whom suffered drastic cuts in public spending and the embarrassment of having their nation become synonymous with embezzlement and mass government corruption. After all, it wasn’t Anwar’s or Pakatan Harapan’s money that Najib and his cronies stole; it was the people’s taxes. (Aren’t they entitled to at least an opinion, given they’ve not received any compensation?)

In 2020, a Malaysian court found Najib guilty on seven charges related to the transfer of $9.4 million from a 1MDB unit into his personal account. In 2022, he was sent to jail to serve a 12-year sentence after the top court rejected his appeal. In a region drowning in political corruption, the 1MDB convictions were one bright note of accountability.

Quite a few Malaysians are rightfully pissed off that the establishment now appears to be conspiring to weaken his punishments for quite obviously political reasons. In February, a royal pardon halved his prison sentence and reduced his fine. Now, Najib wants to serve his sentence at home, even though a court dismissed his petition for house detention in July.

But we haven’t even yet come to the most grueling part of this saga. “When someone makes a sincere statement, we must receive it sincerely. That is an example of good leadership,” Anwar stated. One might retort that it’s actually an example of opportunistic leadership since Anwar is obviously trying to steal away some of Najib’s UMNO supporters because his own coalition is flailing.

Worse still, Anwar admonished the masses for not accepting an “apology” that wasn’t even an “apology.” (One might retort that the only dim-witted person in this story was Anwar for believing that Najib was making a “sincere statement.”) The witting reader might have noticed that I’ve written apology in scare quotes throughout this article for the simple reason that Najib didn’t apologize.

What Najib said was this: “To be held legally responsible for something that I did not initiate or have knowledge of, is unfair to me, and I hope and pray that the judicial process will be in my favor and prove my innocence.” How is that an apology? He said sorry that the grand theft occurred, not for his role in it. Surely his lack of contrition must be considered when the courts decide whether he should get the privilege so few in Malaysia get and see out the rest of his detention at home.

Granted, Anwar reckons it’s wrong to single out one person for monumental theft from the sovereign wealth fund. But doesn’t the buck stop at the top? And how can’t Anwar see the glaring contradiction he made across three sentences? On the one hand, the prime minister is the “father of the nation” when Anwar wants to dictate how people should think. On the other hand, Najib, when prime minister, wasn’t “father of the nation” during his cronies’ theft of $4.5 billion of the people’s money under his watch. Anwar has proved himself to be a hypocritical and egotistical fellow since taking office, and his speeches are often laden with contempt for the Malaysian people who apparently haven’t offered him enough gratitude and latitude because of his years in opposition. But his fatuousness is startling.

Perhaps the most penetrating criticism came from a letter penned by Aliran, a multi-ethnic reform movement, which argued: “Anwar’s labeling of critics as “bebal” (dim-witted) exposes the same toxic arrogance that people endured under Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s rule.” Indeed, even though the former premier had Anwar, his deputy prime minister, twice imprisoned, there’s much of the master in the protegee.

We’ve heard Mahathir’s blatant antisemitism from Anwar’s mouth this year. We’ve seen Mahathir’s disdain for free speech and civil liberties in Anwar’s policies. Now we have the same disdain for the people he’s supposedly there to serve. The story was spun in 2018 that Mahathir, after defeating the corrupt Najib in an election, had gone from autocrat to democrat. Anwar is now reaching the end of his journey from autocrat-adjacent democrat to autocrat.