The black hand of the executive has once again reared its ugly head when former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's final appeal was postponed ( for the third time) for a totally unacceptable reason.

The newly appointed Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail was the least qualified to use 'unpreparedness' as an excuse to postpone the hearing. Abdul Gani should be the person most thoroughly familiar with the case.

He was also the central figure in a case within a case, when Anwar's lawyers applied to have Abdul Gani removed as prosecutor for his alleged role in coercing (with a death penalty) Anwar's tennis partner S Nallakarupan to fabricate evidence against Anwar.

Gani's alleged criminal role was critically questioned by the Federal Court (our highest court) when it quashed a contempt of court conviction against then Anwar's lawyer Zainur Zakaria, arising from the application to remove Gani as prosecutor.

(Gani has not to date answered this accusation of fabrication of evidence against Anwar.)

Apart from Gani's personal familiarity with this case, the entire AG's Chambers cannot be excused for being unprepared, for this appeal was originally scheduled for hearing in the year 2000, and was postponed again last year. Now is the year 2002, why should the prosecutors be unprepared for it?

Gani's excuse that he was newly appointed and had very little time to prepare for the case must be condemned with the utmost contempt.

Lest we forget, Anwar has been languishing in jail for the past three and a half years. During this time, he has gone through hell and fire. He went through the agony of two long trials, which were universally condemned as a travesty of justice.

For the past year and a half, he has been suffering from pain due to a spinal injury and is being denied the medical treatment of his choice. And now, in protest against the indefinite postponement, he has begun to fast until a new hearing date is fixed.

Needless to say, his fasting will cause his frail physical conditions to deteriorate rapidly.

At this moment, when almost everyone's attention is captured by the daily unfolding news on terrorism, it is pertinent to refresh our memory on the circumstances surrounding Mahathir's strike against his anointed successor almost four years ago.

Malaysia was then in the deepest moment of its economic crisis, along with other countries in the region. Suharto had just been toppled by angry masses when Indonesia's economy crumpled in a heap of debts due to massive corruption and cronyism and reckless spending. Malaysia's position looked precarious, having been afflicted by the same ailment, albeit on a lesser scale.

The Malaysian currency had crashed. So had the stock market, amidst scandalous dealings by the powerful, most notably the siphoning of massive cash from UEM through the purchase of Renong shares from certain mysterious sellers.

(This resulted in Halim Saad committing the now famous RM3.2 billion put option to UEM to pacify the panicky investing public. This put option is now canceled by the government, after it had acquired UEM, in another massive bailout operation to rescue Halim Saad and the Renong Group.)

Many large-scale crony enterprises became insolvent, which prompted the powers that be to pour in billions of public funds to rescue them. It is in these massive bailing out of cronies that the conflict between Anwar and the Mahathir/Daim axis intensified.

As the then minister of finance, Anwar acting on public interests, resisted these sweeping bailouts, thus incurring the wrath of Mahathir and Daim, who saw Anwar as a major threat to the survival of their business empires.

Fearing that Malaysia was fast going down the drain the Indonesian way with investors' confidence collapsing, UmnoYouth, apparently acting under the sanction of Anwar, decided to make a move to change Umno's course by calling for a war against corruption, cronyism and nepotism during the Umno annual meet in 1998.

This battle cry sent shivers down the spine of the Mahathir/Daim axis. The final decision was made. Anwar was to be destroyed.

Immediately after being sacked from the cabinet and Umno in Sept 1998, Anwar counter struck by exposing massive corruption and abuse of power at the top echelon in his speeches. It is noteworthy that in the ensuing reformasi movement launched by him during the few precious days of freedom that he had before being arrested on Sept 20, its platform was not confined to fighting corruption, but the restoration of justice and democracy, which had been almost totally destroyed by Mahathir through creeping legislation and usurpation of other independent institutions during his long reign.

Anwar's cries of reformasi have awakened a new generation of Malays to the folly of blindly supporting the Umno leadership purely on racial considerations. Widespread corruption to enrich a few Malay elites have not only failed to uplift the economic status of the vast majority of Malays, but have corroded the morals of the Malaysian society and lowered the efficiency of the public as well as the private sectors.

It is not often that a developing country is blessed with a good leader. When we have one among our midst, can we afford to let him perish with our indifference and inaction?

Anwar has sacrificed all he has to uphold his principles and defend the interests of his country. The least the people can do is to demonstrate their solidarity with him resoundingly with words and deeds at this desperate hour, when his very life may be hanging on a thread.