The government’s major task is to convince the public that investigation, prosecution and trial of Anwar is professional and fair. This is uphill all the way because the Court of Public Opinion has already passed the verdict of ‘guilty’ on the government no matter how professional or fair it seeks to be. Not only the police has received “black eyes” but the whole criminal justice system beginning from police investigation, prosecutorial discretion and impartiality of trial! So how? Even if the government now allows foreign experts to extract DNA/blood sample from Anwar, procures investigation of the case by the FBI, gets the attorney general of US to prosecute and the Supreme Court of US to try Anwar – even were all these processes possible – people will say the government has exercised undue influence on all these foreigners to fix Anwar!

The prosecution on grounds of sodomy is seen by many as politically motivated, and it is different to change that perception and bias of the public. No one else, who is not criminal, has yet been charged for sodomy. All Malaysian and Singapore cases involving a prosecution of unnatural sex whether oral or anal also involve other criminal acts of battery, assault, robbery, rape or having sex with minor (stautory rape). No gay homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, travestite (“pondan”) estimated to form anything from 10 to 15% of the general population, who has otherwise perpetrated grame crimes as stated above, has ever been prosecuted….

Sodomy is a law that is a colonial relic, almost never invoked except to aggravate the prosecution and punishment of a criminal. Otherwise prosecutorial discretion is always to look another way or to leave the matter to religious officers to do the necesary whether counselling or punishment. As Tun Dr Mahathir said, “there are certain habits which are not easy to be rid off. Habitual smokers will tell you that. So will drug addicts”, and this (especially when it is consensual) is tacitly acknowledged and dealt with by turning a blind eye unless in extreme cases of collateral harm to the victim.

So when sodomy is turned against a political icon like Anwar who is otherwise never accused of any other crime then regardless of whether he really has this occasional queer habit or is baselessly accused of it, the public and people will always give him the benefit of the doubt because deep inside there is already a irrefutable perception that it is a political prosecution. The simple fact is non other, who is not otherwise suspected of criminal acts inflicting harm on victim, has ever been prosecuted.

And a political prosecution, even if proceeding on the most solid ground of fact and evidence, will never be accepted when large sections of the rakyat have already given up hopes on BN to bring change for the better in the country and pined their collective hopes and aspirations on Anwar to bring such change, whether or not these hopes are corectly placed or misplaced. This is the main challenge facing the government in trying to grapple with the problem of changing public perception to dymystify the persona of Anwar. It faces a Court of Public Opinion that repeatedly delivers judgment of guilt against the accusers (government) as if truth be told many are not even bothered at the veracity of the accusations against Anwar, whether well founded or not, for what they are more concerned with is that the change of govt and reform agenda is not derailed at any costs.

It is through Anwar that public hope of a better life and country finds expression and by reason of this Anwar could for now leverage extensively on this aset of a vast reservoir of public goodwill and sympathy to face his accusers.