The Malaysian government's norms for medical treatment for prisoners, is at best basic, short of what international protocols insists should be the minimum. Unless the man seeking it is not your everyday Muthu, Ah Chong or Ahmad. If it is someone who once wielded power, in business or politics, special treatment is the norm, even if it is against the rules.

So, one prisoner was allowed a waterbed and given time off to attend to his businesses. Another spent most of his sentence at the General Hospital. A cabinet minister jailed for murder, was prison librarian, a much sought out job taken away from another when his death sentence was commuted to life. A mentri besar jailed for corruption met his visitors in the prison chief's office, with a warder serving food and drinks to his visitors.

But in the case of now-jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, the aim is to humiliate and hope he would yield. He is now told he is treated better than the others; yet, every request he makes, through his lawyers, is turned into a political hot potato. He is told he is treated better than the other prisoners, but is not told why or how.

In intense pain

He is in intense pain. An old back injury is aggravated when the former Inspector-General of Police, no less, went at him, manacled and blindfolded, shortly after his arrest, with karate chops so severe that a royal commission of inquiry was needed. Then there is still the unresolved allegation that he was subjected to arsenic poisoning in prison.

If he is, as the government insists, a common prisoner, why are the deputy prime minister's aides brought in to decide what kind of cell he should be put in at the Sungei Buloh prison when he leaves hospital? Why does the cabinet have to decide what kind of medical treatment he is entitled to? Why cannot the government stand firmly and tell him bluntly to his face he is a common prisoner and he will get the treatment other prisoners can expect?

It did not respond promptly to his request for endoscopic surgery overseas. The political and bureaucratic foot-dragging damaged its case beyond belief. Petty restrictions are imposed, and highlighted, and when he finally arrives, Dr Thomas Hoogland, is put through the hoops, yet again, of bureaucratic bungling.

The operation must be in Malaysia. The health minister, Chua Jui Meng, even argues Anwar is anti-national for insisting upon the operation overseas, and for casting aspersions on local medical talent. The director of the Kuala Lumpur Hospital says all facilities can be brought in from hospitals all over the country, but for the endoscope. So, the operation, it is argued, can be done locally.

Sensitive equipment

But is this how it ought to be done: a specially prepared clinic to be dismantled immediately after?

Is it as simple as Malaysia's medical experts insist, for Dr Hoogland to bring his equipment for the operation, then take it back with him to Germany after it? As anyone operating sensitive, costly equipment would tell you, that once installed, it must be tested and it would be months before it would be ready - and even then it may not meet the standards the endoscopic surgeon expects.

This is known to the government. So, a new attack is opened. The foreign minister tells a conference in Geneva that Anwar had agreed not to go overseas for treatment. Now this is a revelation that should have been announced when Dr Hoogland was allowed to come here.

Why was it not? The deputy prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, weighs in with his considered view that Anwar need not go overseas for the surgery can be done here.

But perhaps the government would let Anwar go overseas for medical treatment provided he does not return. He has no such intention. He expects to return speedily after his surgery. And that could only reopen the political confrontation yet again - and to the government's detriment.

Figure to watch

When a group of his friends, with the government's blessings, offered him a scholarship to do his Masters at Oxford, when detained without trial in the mid-1970s, he would have none of it - not when he is in detention, he told them.

Anwar has repositioned himself as irrelevant in the Malay political confrontation. But in so doing, he is a figure to watch. Whatever options are considered about Malaysia's future at the turn of the 21st century, his persona looms large. Whether it be Malay unity talks, the survival of Umno or even if Dr Mahathir Mohamad must continue as prime minister.

However one looks at it, his well-being allows the government to flounder; it could not contain the political fallout should anything untoward happen to him. Dr Mahathir knows this. Anwar knows this. The Malay community knows this. Which is why his need for endoscopic surgery is no more medical. It is political. He could go overseas if he agreed to not come back. But that is like asking a leopard to change its spots.