COMMENT Has the controversy that has broken out over Nurul Izzah Anwar’s claims that her father was offered the post of deputy prime minister by Najib Abdul Razak after the general election in May 2013 any hope of resolution?

It seems very much a case of she said/he said, which everyone knows is inherently irresolvable.

The track record of the contending parties, i.e. their credibility, is a plausible way to ascertain the truth of the claims, but that means is not exactly reliable.

Already, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, in dismissing Nurul’s story, has described her as having a tendency to be economical with the truth.

Khairy cited the case of things the PKR vice-president and MP for Lembah Pantai said about her opponent, Raja Nong Chik Raja Zainal Abidin, in the run-up to the last general election.

Nong Chik sued and a court settlement had required of Nurul to express regret which she did publicly.

Ditto, Nurul’s credibility quotient suffered demerit points.

Besides Nurul’s (right) subtracted credibility, Khairy argues there is no reason why the prime minister and winner of GE13 Najib should negotiate with “loser” Anwar, the leader of the opposition coalition that contested Putrajaya tenancy rights with a BN-leading Najib.

Outright winners don’t have to make deals with clear losers, Khairy credibly argued.

Besides, if a deal was talked over, why prattle about it two years after it took place? Why wasn’t it ventilated much earlier? Why now rather than much earlier when, presumably, the truth or untruth of the claims could have been determined with less difficulty?

These are valid caveats but they do not necessarily invalidate what Nurul has claimed.

Right now, the person who could say something illuminating about the controversy is someone who would be necessarily bound by the etiquette that governs matters of this nature.

He is vice-president of Indonesia Jusuf Kalla. He was in the same position under immediate past president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as he is now under the incumbent Joko Widodo.

Jusuf (right) was the intermediary between Najib and Anwar in the behind the scenes manoeuvring that preceded Election 2013 and continued for a bit after the poll.

Jusuf is a friend of Anwar’s and as a Bugis considers himself close to kinsman Najib.

In a notable pronouncement on April 3, 2013, when he announced the dissolution of the 12th Parliament, Najib pledged to accept the results of the general election that was soon to be held.

The pledge was remarkable in that it is de rigueur for contenders in a democratic poll to accept its results - there is no need for a pledge to accept the results; acceptance is assumed.

Playing to an agreed script?

How do we know that Najib, in making the pledge, was playing to an agreed script mediated by Jusuf?

Immediately after the election, the Asian Wall Street Journal, in a news report, quoted a frustrated Jusuf as saying that Pakatan had broken their promise.

This was the promise Anwar gave that Pakatan would accept the results of the election.

Anwar had resorted to Jusuf’s good offices to get Najib to publicly pledge BN will accept the results when Election 2013, the 13th since the country’s independence in 1957, is held.

Najib duly obliged and went on to claim a gerrymandered victory after polls results were announced in the wee hours of May 6.  

By contrast, Anwar cried foul at the results and began to lead public rallies in protest, a reaction that saw go-between Jusuf venting to ASWJ his disappointment at Anwar’s failure to abide by the understanding he had brokered.

Five weeks later, over a weekend when Anwar was in Bali at Bambang’s invitation to discuss Malaysia’s election, followed by a day in Jakarta to which Anwar repaired to assuage Jusuf, the latter was also host to Najib who, ostensibly, was on a private visit.

Jusuf shuttled between his house in Jakarta and Anwar’s hotel, carrying the terms of an offer by Najib to Anwar, a shuttle undertaken after he could not persuade Anwar to meet Najib in person.

The details of Jusuf’s shuttle diplomacy Anwar disclosed to PKR insiders immediately after his return to Malaysia.

According to the insiders, the terms contained an offer to PKR to join the BN government.

If accepted the offer would have entailed abandoning PKR’s partners, DAP and PAS.

The terms could not be accepted.

For details of the terms, the mediator is in the best position to disclose, but Jusuf will first have to put aside the unwritten confidentiality protocols that govern matters of this nature.

Given what has befallen his friend Anwar, who is languishing in jail on a change many - including perhaps Jusuf - regard as politically motivated, those protocols cry out for non-compliance.

Alas, Jusuf must be keeper of his own conscience.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.