"When I was brought to the hospital, I was stripped naked for tests and had my private parts examined," the PKR de facto leader (Anwar Ibrahim) told a press conference at his house hours after he was freed on police bail. - Malaysiakini report.

‘Anwar was not stripped naked'. HKL director: His decency was not violated. - Sunday Star headline

In an earlier post, I stated that it was astonishing how a simple and trivial detail like Anwar's state of dress during his medical examination while in custody could persist as a matter of ambiguity in the public record, amidst the media spin and the (seemingly) contradictory statements of the parties directly concerned.

Seemingly contradictory? Well, let's look at the actual statements attributed to Dr Zaininah Mohd Zain (Hospital Kuala Lumpur director) in the above Star report, quoted from her press statement to Bernama :

"Only after having obtained his written consent did they proceed with the examination."

"He was then examined by the two specialists who adhered to proper clinical procedures during the whole course of the examination."

"At no time was his decency violated."

After checking the Bernama website and without access to Dr Zaininah's full statement to the news agency, we are left to ponder as to whether the Star was indulging in editorial license with its liberal use of quote marks, since there's no evidence that Zaininah explicitly denied Anwar's claims of having been completely disrobed.

Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar had declared that his remarks to the press on the ongoing police investigations "were aimed at preventing confusion among the people" ( Star , July 20). We wish. The way things are going, would it be surprising if at least some are persuaded that when nothing is known for certain, anything is possible, if not plausible.

Private eye P Balasubramaniam's dramatic statutory declaration implicating Deputy PM Najib Abdul Razak in the events preceding Altantuya Shaariibuu's disappearance and murder - and its immediate retraction the day after - certainly reinforced this mood.

So, amidst this swirl of editorial spin, misinformation, and disinformation, how certain am I that Anwar is not a sodomist? Well, how certain am I - for 98 percent of my male acquaintances - that they're not sodomists either? More importantly, does it matter? Should it matter?

I'll leave it to another time to speculate as to whether this muddying of the waters was an incidental side effect, or to what extent it might have been a more conscious ploy in the politics of ambiguity.

The politics of pre-incumbency

For now, I'd like to pursue instead a different take on Anwar's state of dress (or undress), which situates it within a subtle exercise of anticipated executive power, yes, the reach of pre-incumbency power asserted by a prime winister-in-waiting.

In a July 23, posting at Malaysiakini entitled " Medical examination for rape, sodomy accused ", Dr Sharifah Halimah Jaafar, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist explained that in the routine procedure for the medical examination of subjects in rape or sodomy cases, "the examination room should be clean with good lighting.

A male nurse or a medical attendant should be present during the examination. The suspect is made to completely undress and a careful examination is carried out from head to toe, front and back for evidence of physical injuries, state of physical development and the presence of physical abnormality..."

In other words, a full-nudity physical is part of the normal protocol for medical examinations which are conducted as part of police investigations in such cases. So it's not unusual, in such circumstances, to be stripped naked while enduring the indignity of having one's private parts scrutinised and measured.

Nothing to be solicitous about, unless the subject happens to be the prime minister-in-waiting who has publicly declared his innocence, and furthermore, wishes to signal his expectation of the decorum due to a soon-to-be chief executive.

I could be wrong, but let me go out on a limb and say that's a reasonable way to see it. If so, it's yet another demonstration of political astuteness which Anwar has displayed in the recent past.

In the election campaigning leading up to polling day on March 8, Anwar spared no effort in striving to transform a legalistic handicap and a weakness into a source of inspiration and strength.

Deprived of the opportunity to run for elective office himself, he traversed the country in support of PKR (and other) candidates in the recent general elections, deploying his famed oratorical skills and spreading his appeal in ceramah after ceramah to a multiplicity of constituencies, with the implicit message that a vote for the PKR candidate was potentially a vote for him, since "these fine PKR candidates have also generously offered to step down if they were to be elected, to allow me to represent this constituency once I am able to offer myself in a by-election". (I plead guilty here to journalistic license with quote marks).

Anwar is now taking an advance on the executive power of incumbency. Be nice, or more importantly, be professional, when you're called upon to perform your duties, as medical staff, as ACA and police officers, and yes, even as members of the judiciary.

I'm the prime minister-in-waiting, who will shortly (come September?) be your Supreme Boss.

Your Present Boss is in a bind - the more he (and his associates) try to prolong his tenure, by centralising and tightening his grip on executive authority and abusing it, the more apprehensive you, the implementing officers will be, when the change of guard comes to pass and this power is turned over to the prime minister-in-waiting.

Neutralising the power imbalance

Anwar, with his periodic reminders of his status as prime minister-in-waiting is displaying not so much a power-hungry impatience, as tactical shrewdness and acumen, in trying to re-jig if not neutralise the current power imbalances between Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat, as far as their respective influence and authority over agencies of government and other institutions vested with power.

For a politician who has such a profound understanding of power, the temptation could prove irresistible, once he accedes to power, to gravitate towards the mindset, rationalisations and apologia of those ensconced in power, couched undoubtedly in the most sophisticated and persuasive of terms.

Grandeur aside, we've seen what can happen, with the "social democratic conscience" of the Barisan Nasional, how corrupting proximity to power can be, even at its fringes. It would be sad indeed, if democracy were merely a cry of the excluded.

If I may re-cycle another paragraph from an earlier, pre-election posting: As Malaysians, we would hope (no, we demand) that those who seek public office would display the same degree of self-sacrifice, as shown by Gordon Brown, when he devolved operational autonomy in monetary policy and interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, as New Labour's incoming finance minister in 1997.

Sacrifice not in the interests of powerful constituencies, nor in the interests of self-perpetuating tenure in public office, but more importantly, in the interests of effective, institutionalised safeguards against future abuses of public office.