I beg to disagree with Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad's opinion that no matter what former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim's faults and shortcomings, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is to be blamed for striking a lethal blow to our institution of independent judiciary in the letter A partisan judiciary will damn us all . I have another perspective.

The independence of judiciary, and the separation of powers between executive, legislative and judiciary as inspired by the writings of Voltaire, Rosseau and Montesquieu may mean something to the editor of SuaramAnum.com and the middle-class western educated.

However, it holds no relevance for the majority of Malaysians whose political culture is feudalistic based on absolute obedience of political elites in exchange for protection and favours, and whose votes are influenced mainly by considerations of race and religion.

Why blame Mahathir for controlling the judiciary and not members of the judiciary themselves who did not mind being controlled for the sake of taking over the lord president's position or an all-expense paid holiday trip to New Zealand?

For the information of your readers, the very lord president who was displaced because of this so-called muzzling of the judiciary by Mahathir is now helping PAS to enact the Hudud and Qisas Bill for Terengganu even if they strike at the heart of the Federal Constitution.

In terms of serving human rights, what do hudud and qisas have in common with an independent judiciary?

Ultimately, this is the question — whether Anwar is fit to inherit the high responsibility of office that he was prepared to take to the streets to fight for?

I am not even talking of abuse of power and sodomy for which he was convicted.

Anwar's abuse of power by using his position to put himself away from harm in protection of his political position is what every other minister in Mahathir's cabinet would likewise do and would have done in a similar predicament.

The same with sodomy. Whether he was heterosexual, homosexual or bi-sexual has got no bearing on his capacity to inherit office as far as I am concerned and other politicians have their share of sexual scandals that have been hushed up.

So let us not adopt a holier-than-thou attitude.

The shortcoming then has nothing to do with these. After 16 years in power and in full knowledge of the feudal practice of Umno in distributing largesse at the rakyat's expense to both the elites and supporters, why complain and seek to expose the system only when kicked out of this system?

Why didn't he expose the billion-ringgit projects awarded to the other cronies and corruption prior to his fallout with Mahathir? When he did not protest in resignation on the unfair prosecution of Lim Guan Eng for standing up for a poor little Malay girl, he has forfeited and waived the right to use corruption and a compromised judiciary as a moral basis to condemn Mahathir and demand his own political salvation.

Once public opinion is set, nothing else that goes against this set notion is fair: hence the current opinion against the Federal Court no matter what principles of law it strictly followed to dismiss his appeal.

Maybe then a lot of things — but when one rallied thousands on the streets to demand the resignation of the legally constituted prime minister, it frightfully is reminiscent of the mob democracy and demonstrations of Indonesia and the Philippines.

It is as one of your writers said, a political fight to the finish and as he asked, what else could Mahathir do?

Mahathir probably thought the sodomy, that he probably believed Anwar was guilty of, whatever the truth might be, was the best weapon to destroy Anwar's strongest credentials as an Islamist icon. In the process he was destroying Islamists' hopes all over the land. That he could not convince guilt in the trial has unleashed so much anger that PAS now controls two states, and threatening two others up north.

So the thing that is held in sanctity by many voters is not independence of the judiciary of which they care nothing about. It is only used as a moral basis to legitimise an attack on the prime minister because of widespread anger of his humiliation of an Islamist icon, and by extension the cultural heritage of the religion itself.

Just think about this: Would there be such an outcry that led PAS to capture more states if Lim Kit Siang instead of Anwar had been falsely prosecuted and convicted of sodomy?

For this same reason those who criticise Mahathir/Umno for manacling the judiciary see no inconsistency in supporting PAS' theocratic and totalitarianistic policies of political, religious, social and moral control that would have balked at Voltaire, Rosseau and Montesquieu.