Anwar, 63, said the charge was part of a political plot that mirrors his dismissal as finance minister in 1998 and convictions for corruption and sodomy, something the government of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has denied.
With Anwar tied up in court, Najib’s approval ratings have surged and promises of economic reforms by the government have impressed foreign investors, although they are waiting for implementation before turning bullish.
Najib does not need to hold polls until 2013, but his rising popularity and strong economic data have prompted analysts to expect the general election to be held in late 2011 or early 2012.
The trial has been slowed by frequent appeals from Anwar’s lawyers seeking access to medical evidence, trying to get the case and the judge dismissed, all of which have failed. The prolonged trial has failed to generate the excitement of 1998, when tens of thousands rallied for Anwar.
Today, medical evidence related to the charge that Anwar sodomised a young male aide was heard after Anwar returned from Washington where he was quoted by the Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia as saying last week that he had “one foot in parliament and one foot in jail.”
Anwar’s PKR has been hit by a wave of defections, and his leadership of the three-party opposition, which DAP and PAS, has come under question.
“Anwar has been distracted by the trial,” said James Chin, political analyst at the Monash University campus in Kuala Lumpur.
Anwar in September 2008 claimed that he could win over enough defectors from the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition that has ruled this Southeast Asian country of 28 million people for over half a century. But he has seen a string of by-election successes come to an end.
The government has replaced a lacklustre leader with Najib in 2009, and Najib has seen his approval ratings rise to 69 per cent from 45 per cent when he took office, according to independent pollster the Merdeka Center.
Najib has announced a series of economic reforms aimed at winning back investor confidence in a country. Malaysia had once accounted for almost a third of foreign direct investment into Southeast Asia, but such investment has now fallen off sharply.
Investors are now more concerned about whether those reforms will be implemented than about the prospect that the government could lose power at the next general election.
The 2008 polls, which saw the government lose its iron-clad two-thirds majority in Parliament and drove the opposition to power in five of Malaysia’s 13 states, caused the country’s stock market to crash by 9.5 per cent the day after the results were announced.
Political analysts said Najib looked set to call elections well before the 2013 date by which they must be held, possibly as early as the last quarter of 2011, and said that with Anwar tied up in court, his PKR party could fare badly.
“The real problem with Anwar’s trial is that if PKR ends up with the lowest number of seats in the next election, the (opposition) leadership will go to PAS or the DAP,” said Monash University’s Chin.
“That is unacceptable to both sides (PAS and DAP),” he said.
The secular, largely ethnic Chinese party DAP and Islamists PAS have maintained an uneasy alliance with Anwar’s party, with the former baulking at PAS plans to introduce Islamic laws, and PAS itself is split by arguments between the party’s conservative wing and its reformers. — Reuters
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After almost a two-month hiatus, the Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy II trial resumes tomorrow and will continue for the next six weeks with the continued cross-examination of two Hospital Kuala Lumpur doctors – Dr Siew Shueu Feng, Dr Khairul Nizam Hassan and possibly other witnesses including a chemist who may testify on the DNA test performed on the semen.
However, Anwar’s team may find itself hampered as two of its hired specialists – pathologist Dr David Wells and DNA specialist Dr Brian McDonald – may not be available for the earlier portion of the trial.
The hearing resumes after Anwar’s defence team had failed in their appeal at the Court of Appeal in seeking the recusal of the High Court trial judge Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah for the second time.
On Dec 6, Justice Zabidin dismissed Karpal Singh’s appeal application on the grounds there is no threat of bias to his conduct, after the senior lawyer pointed out that the judge had not followed a Supreme Court ruling in providing the defence team access to all the doctors’ notes and other forms during the examination of the victim, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan.
At one point of time, Zabidin was seen to warn Karpal with contempt.
The hearing itself stops when Karpal tried to test the credibility of Dr Siew, who refused to look at the pro-forma notes taken when interviewing Saiful.
Anwar, 63, is charged with sodomising Saiful, his former aide, at the Desa Damansara condominium on June 26, 2008.
Doctor refused to look at notes
Doctor refused to look at notes
Dr Siew had consistently refused to look at the pro-forma notes, or other medical notes which he had taken while testifying, in a bid to prevent the defence from being given access to it.
As a result he had testified based on his memory.
However, Anwar’s defence team had caught the HKL doctor in a compromising position when the witness admitted he had looked at the pro-forma notes during a short recess granted by the court.
The pro-forma notes are a set of questions and procedures which doctors use in handling cases of sexual assault.
This resulted in Justice Zabidin ordering Dr Siew (right) to provide the notes to the defence team, after he had earlier provided to them a blank pro-forma note denoting the type of questions asked to sexual assault victims.
Dr Siew is seen as a vital witness as he was the one taking the notes and also labelling the samples taken from Saiful’s examination.
He had then passed the samples which were sealed in a plastic bag to investigating officer ASP Jude Blacious Pereira.
Dr Khairul Nizam Hassan, 40, was meanwhile responsible for doing the physical examination on Saiful, saying during the examination-in-chief by solicitor general II Mohd Yusof Zainal Abiden, that he found stretch marks on Saiful’s back.
Dr Razali Ibrahim, the first doctor to be cross-examined, was responsible for examining Saiful’s anus, where specimen retrieved by using cotton tip was found to contain semen .
He then concluded that there was penetration.READMORE http://themalaysiantribune-taxidriver.blogspot.com/2011/02/umno-barisan-empires-life-is-at-merc
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