COMMENT | Governing, no matter who does it, is part philosophy, part exigency, part panic, and part payoff. And it is never easy to ascribe precise percentages to each component.

But poetry (read: philosophy) has been an essential part of the story of Anwar Ibrahim’s durability in Malaysian politics.

With Rafizi Ramli’s resurgence in PKR earlier this year, it was anticipated that the political career of Anwar would end without the achievement of his long-sought goal of the premiership of the country.

But by year’s end, in a turn of fortunes that reminds us of how hazardous the business of political prognostication is, there is cause to reflect on the relevance of a refrain from the poetry of Thomas Stearns Eliot, possibly Anwar’s favourite bard:

“In my end is my beginning.”

The line is...