COMMENT | A cover-up presumes a discovery had been made. Something must first be unearthed before it can be buried. But when no investigation is ever launched - when the ground remains deliberately untouched, what is there to hide?

The answer, quite simply, is everything.

This is the perplexing context of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s recent assurance that there would be “no cover-up” in the scandal involving the Football Association of Malaysia’s (FAM) registration of seven heritage players.

The statement is logically strange because a cover-up is precisely what occurs when an investigation is prevented from starting.

When the scandal broke in late September...