Ruling Deals Severe Blow to Anwar's Defense : Judge Rejects Request For Mahathir to Testify 
International Herald Tribune
April 22, 2000
Thomas Fuller

The judge presiding over the trial of Anwar Ibrahim rejected Friday a request that Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad be forced to testify in the Malaysian case.

The decision, a severe blow to the former deputy prime minister's defense, led Mr. Anwar, despondent and angry, to tell his lawyers that he was considering giving up the case.

"Where is the justice in this court?" Mr. Anwar shouted, standing up, after Judge Arifin Jaka read his decision.

Defense lawyers have been trying for months to get Mr. Mahathir, who dismissed Mr. Anwar from government 19 months ago, to testify.

But Judge Arifin said Friday that "there is not an iota of evidence by any witness so far to show Dr. Mahathir was involved in a political conspiracy to topple Dato Seri Anwar, and it would not be a matter for this trial even if there exists such a conspiracy." Dato Seri, an honorific given to the country's most prominent and successful people, was conferred upon Mr. Anwar before he fell out with Mr. Mahathir.

The wording of Judge Arifin's judgment appeared to reject the heart of Mr. Anwar's defense: that the sodomy charges against him were trumped up as an excuse to oust him from office.

"If they are unable to call the prime minister, it will make his defense quite precarious," said Lim Guan Eng, an opposition politician who recently served 12 months in prison for sedition. "Things do not look very bright for him," he told the Reuters news agency.

Mr. Anwar seemed to have anticipated the decision Friday: He carried with him into court, before the decision was known, two handwritten statements, one in English, one in Malay, denouncing the judge's decision.

The statements, in which Mr. Anwar compared Mr. Mahathir to a "mouse shuddering" at the "thought of being questioned by my counsels," were distributed to reporters after court was recessed. He wrote that the judge's decision "underscores the conditions that Malaysians are living in despite the democratic facade."

Mr. Anwar, who is accused of sodomizing his wife's former driver, faces 20 years in prison if convicted. He is already serving a six-year prison sentence after being found guilty last year of abuse of power.

After the decision was read out to the court Friday, Christopher Fernando, a defense lawyer, said that his client's "immediate reaction" was to "abandon this trial because he feels his chances of succeeding are next to zero."

But Mr. Fernando said the defense team had advised Mr. Anwar to carry on when the trial resumed Wednesday "to let the world and nation know what happened." The battle between Mr. Anwar and his former mentor, Mr. Mahathir, has dominated Malaysian politics since 1998, when Mr. Anwar was dismissed.

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