PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim told a packed public forum on the judiciary in Kuala Lumpur last night that the government's tendency to play up to the lowest common denominator is producing semi-literate ministers who are an embarrassment in international circles.

Anwar (right), addressing the forum shortly after returning from Jakarta where he was on a working visit, related an episode in London a few months ago when he met up with editors of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

He said BBC journalists told him they were stupefied when Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin admonished them for talking to 'losers' like Anwar Ibrahim.

Instead, Zainuddin (left) said, the journalists should refer to other, presumably, more reliable sources for information on Malaysia.

"The editors told me that not even then British Prime Minister Tony Blair had the temerity to tell them how to do their work and that they had laid into him often enough for him to want to do so," said Anwar to laughter from the overflow audience at a leading hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Anwar was addressing about 1,000 people who had packed the ballroom to listen to a panel discussion on the judicial crisis themed, 'How to stop the rot?'

Other discussants were Salleh Abbas, the sacked former lord rresident, retired Court of Appeal judge Shaik Daud Ismail, and Malaysia Bar vice-president Ragunath Kesavan. Human rights lawyer Sivarasa Rasiah moderated the session.

Elaborating on his encounter with BBC journalists, Anwar said: "The editors were astounded at Zainuddin and asked, 'How were it possible that we have semi-literate people as ministers of information?'"

Zainuddin's strictures are especially hard to understand because he had been a journalist with the Utusan Malaysia publishing group and had risen to its top ranks - a level he could not have attained without knowing that a minister lecturing senior journalists on how to do their job is considered by the fraternity as strictly no-no.

At first, they favour Al Jazeera

Only last week, Zainuddin rapped Al Jazeera for their extensive coverage of the hugely attended march in Kuala Lumpur by civil society groups and opposition political parties campaigning for electoral reform.

He said of the increasingly popular TV network that it was allowing itself to be manipulated by the Malaysian opposition.

Lost on him was the irony that when CNN and the BBC gave good coverage to the reformasi movement nearly a decade ago, they were lambasted by the government as fostering a colonial read western agenda which supposedly wanted to detract from Malaysian achievements by playing up conflict.

Al Jazeera, set up by Qatari interests to challenge the CNN-BBC duopoly in international news reporting, was initially favourably viewed by the Malaysian government and welcomed as an alternative to allegedly biased western reporting.

Anwar also told his audience that in Jakarta earlier this week before delivering a keynote speech at an Indonesian conference, he was greeted by local journalists who held up their publications that carried pictures of massive crowds which took part in the march in Kuala Lumpur on Nov 10 to press for electoral reforms.

"The journalists were laughing because their newspapers had pictures of the large crowds side-by-side with comments by Malaysian spokesmen that the crowds were about four hundred in number, " chortled Anwar to an equally mirthful audience at the forum.