As a Malaysian watching from overseas, I've been intrigued by the most recent Anwar-Saiful saga.

Whatever role, if any, Anwar had in causing the recent controversy it's been clear Anwar has been playing it for all it's worth. His recent arrest is like icing on the cake, and such sweet icing it is!

As with many, I wondered whether Anwar would show up for his 2 pm deadline. On the one hand, pictures and news of him being arrested would bring up imagery of the sorry saga in 1998 and re-enforce his claim of the Malaysian police being unnecessarily heavy handed.

On the other hand, when he had been given a clear deadline and failed to show up, a lot of people might just think he was acting like an idiot.

Taking everything into consideration, I had strongly suspected that he would turn up, at the very last minute.

But as it turned out, none of us will ever find out what Anwar had planned, since he was arrested well before the deadline. The police claim they believed he would fail to show up and he was supposed to head directly to them after his interview with the ACA.

It wouldn't surprise me if Anwar intentionally gave this impression. Perhaps, too, the police were worried, as they usually are, about demonstrations outside the police headquarters when Anwar handed himself in.

Whatever the case, in this apparent game of cat-and-mouse, Anwar won.

By arresting him before the deadline, they've played right into Anwar's hand and reinforced his claims of police heavyhandedness while negating any potential negative effect on his image of him not turning up.

Anwar couldn't have planned it better himself...

Of course, all of this must be a very big headache for the PM. I'm sure some are still convinced it's all his (or perhaps his son-in-law's) master plan, or he ordered the police to arrest Anwar.

But let's face it, as flawed of a leader as Abdullah may be, he can't be that dumb. (Anymore than it being likely Mahathir Mohamad ordered Rahim Noor to give Anwar his infamous black eye.)

Perhaps the only ‘good’ thing about the police handling of this matter is that they're apparently trying to use it to cover the arrest of Raja Petra Kamaruddin today.

Some may think this part of a crackdown on independent voices in light of the arrest but I doubt it.

I suspect it has been planned for a while, this just seems like an excellent time to actually carry it out since they realised no one is really going to notice with all the fuss over Anwar's arrest and the demonstrations (and perhaps crackdowns on the demonstrations) that follow.

This sort of ‘hide bad things when no one is paying attention’ is practiced by governments and similar entities worldwide and has a cruel logic to it.

It at least indicates our police aren't as incompetent as they sometimes seem even if only in a bad way.

Of course, given the reasons for the arrest, it could easily backfire if it works its way into the conspiracy stories and protests that follow Anwar's arrest.

Sadly, none of this is going to be of comfort to RPK.