Seeing Parti Keadilan Rakyat advisor Anwar Ibrahim and many of the other guests at last Friday's launch of Zunar's latest book, 'Cartoons on Tun..and others', reminded me of one of my favourite political anecdotes.

It is the old one about US President Lyndon B Johnson's response to advisors who urged him to seek the retirement of the ageing and increasingly erratic FBI Director J Edgar Hoover.

LBJ refused to consider the proposal, arguing that Hoover had embarrassing if not damning evidence on virtually every political figure in America, and might very well use it to protect himself or to punish his detractors.

But some advisors persisted in pressuring the president, until he finally lost patience with them and vetoed their proposal with the immortal words: "Boys, I'd rather have Edgar inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

That's all ancient history now, of course. LBJ (photo) and Hoover are long gone, and in any event it happened in America.

But here and now in Malaysia, Anwar is very much alive and kicking, and very much outside the tent on the local scene. And having survived his trials, tribulations and years in jail, he's on a mission to clear out all the corrupt and inept by subjecting them to precisely the same kind of treatment that LBJ feared Hoover would resort to if ejected from office.

He's starting with principal tormentor, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, against whom Anwar has a RM100 million libel suit pending. Not to avenge himself on the former PM, he says, but to seek vindication and restore his reputation in the face of the latter's false and malicious slurs on his sexual orientation.

Whether Anwar will succeed or whether the suit will be entertained by the court at all depends, of course, on the same system of 'justice' that Dr M employed as his tool to try and destroy his hapless deputy in the first place. A system which, as Anwar of all people is only too aware, still employs the likes of the judge in his own trials, Augustine Paul, who in his speech last Friday night, he characterised as "rotten to the core".

Fortunately for Anwar's case and cause, Dr M is also outside the Umno tent these days, and many insiders are mightily pissed-off by his antagonistic antics and accusations against them in the years since his retirement.

So perhaps this time around he may not be able to so confidently rely on former allies and supporters in the party and the judiciary to rally to his aid against Anwar. Meanwhile, we're waiting eagerly to hear the high court's ruling on Dr M's application to have Anwar's case set aside on the grounds that it is frivolous and vexatious.

Shared motivation

But let's get back to the book launch, which was really all about Anwar, or at least the wave of revulsion that resulted from the vicious and malicious way Mahathir threw him out of the tent and into the clink almost 10 years ago.

This outrageous miscarriage of justice ended forever the political apathy of thousands or even millions of Malaysians. Including Zunar himself, who was moved to not only provide the former deputy PM and his family with moral support, but to henceforth concentrate his considerable cartooning talents exclusively on political criticism.

Not party-political criticism, or partisan support for his friend Anwar, but criticism of any or all abusers of power or position to the detriment of the people whose interests they're supposed to be serving.

As he says in his introduction to the book: "In a situation where people are shackled by a culture of fear then, in my opinion, artists are supposed to be the ones who should come forward and champion the cause of the people. Through my work I try my best to do things most other Malaysian cartoonists fail or maybe forget to highlight. I use the pen and brush to criticise those in power."

And most if not all of the people who were there to celebrate the launch of his latest book are similarly motivated. Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, for example, were moved by the events of 1997 to found www.malaysiakini.com, as were many of us who've since served the cause as staff members, contributors, supporters and subscribers.

Like Zunar, we're all of us outside the tent, and determined to remain there where we belong. Unhappily, however, the majority of Malaysia's media and their readers, viewers and listeners remain resolutely inside.

They prefer, for reasons ranging from blatant self-interest to ignorance or even innocence, to support a system of such breathtaking duplicity that last year the information minister presiding over this mess of misinformation and disinformation was honoured with an 'Eminent Journalist' award.

There are too many media in Malaysia and the world at large that are owned, controlled or regulated by the very governments whose activities they're supposed to be monitoring, so that information becomes not a resource for the enlightenment of the people, but a jealously-guarded political commodity.

And there are far too many talented journalists who've been compromised, censored, silenced or even co-opted as insiders by whatever it takes to win them over - from threats and intimidation to charm, friendship, 'special access', trips, or flat-out bribery with big salaries or titles.
Journalists who keep the faith are a small but I hope growing band. It was an honour to meet and mingle with a group of them last Friday.

Like the resurgent Anwar on the political scene, may Zunar and his fellow believers in journalistic principle and professionalism long persist in producing a stream of pithy cartoons, news and comment against insiders of evil intent.