| IN THE SPOTLIGHT Anwar proves to be flavour of month for media Former Malaysian deputy premier steals limelight as newspapers worldwide report on his every move, option and opinion By Bhagyashree Garekar
A FEW hours after Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was unexpectedly released from prison earlier this month, crowds gathered in Kuala Lumpur's streets clutching copies of a morning newspaper that had managed to capture the news.
It happened to be a Chinese-language broadsheet. Although many people could not read the characters, they could not resist the huge colour pictures either. Since then, the media has not disappointed in feeding - and perhaps creating - the appetite for news of the former deputy premier. Just a small indication: A Google search that scoured 4,500 news sources since the beginning of this month showed some 1,380 hits for Datuk Seri Anwar. In comparison, there were less than half as many for the other popular man of the moment - Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is the front runner in next week's presidential election. From the front pages of major international and regional newspapers to the editorials, columns and features inside, it has been hard to miss reading about Datuk Seri Anwar this month.
Most international magazines have been as generous - the Far Eastern Economic Review featured him on its cover while Time magazine gave him a five-page spread. Both also gave him space to have his say in his own words. 'There is so much to do,' he said in one of them. In the other, he pondered the 'mystical reason' that he was 'out of circulation during one of the most turbulent periods of human history'. The reference was to the post-Sept 11 world. One notable exception to the 'Anwarfest' was in an edition of The Economist, which noted the news developments in just three sentences. Other than that, Datuk Seri Anwar's options ruled everywhere else. Was he returning to the Umno fold, bridging the disparate opposition or reviving the party founded by his wife? He kept the possibilities alive even as readers learned of the next turn his political journey took. To the Financial Times, he confided that he had decided to stay in the opposition, after having said in dozens of 'exclusive' interviews that he was not ruling out joining Umno.
After Wednesday's court verdict ruled out active politics, there is talk of his becoming a global Muslim leader. In an interview carried in the current Far Eastern Economic Review, he kept open that possibility while insisting on a role in local politics. Perhaps this is more a tribute to how media savvy the man is than to the doggedness of reporters. Or is it, as is frequently alleged, that he tries to be all things to all people? Newsweek's Ms Lorien Holland pinned him down on that one. This question was put to him in the Sept 20 Atlantic edition: 'You are sometimes described as a political chameleon, changing your message to suit your audience. How do you respond to these charges?' His reply: 'When I go to the (Malaysian) villages I cite verses of the Quran. And if I talk to you in New York or Washington, I will talk about democracy, I won't quote verses from the Quran. 'But is that fundamentally wrong?...I speak to my audiences in the language they will understand. I have no qualms about it.' |
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