comment One side is caught in a trap of its own making while the other side attempts parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means to garner support for its concerns.

This is where the controversy, ignited by parliamentary opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, over the role and past record of Apco Worldwide, has contrived to situate the Umno-led BN vis-à-vis Pakatan Rakyat.

BN whip Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz has filed notice with the speaker that government MPs intended to move a motion to refer Anwar to the Rights and Privileges Committee for misleading the House.

azlan On the other side, PAS MPs have written to the Rulers’ Council to ask that they intervene to end the contract between the Najib Razak administration and Apco for reasons of protection of national security and preservation of Malaysia’s image in the eyes of Muslim nations, seen as tarnished by Apco’s Jewish (read Zionist) connections.

Meanwhile, PKR’s MP for Batu, Tian Chua, has filed notice of a motion to be tabled in Parliament seeking to end the same contract on national security grounds.          

After Anwar had tendered the evidence to Parliament on March 30 on Apco’s reach and tentacles the world over, all you had from Apco was a denial that they had anything to do the ‘One Israel’ policy of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the ‘1Malaysia’ initiative of Najib Razak’s government.

Given the documented case Anwar presented to Parliament, the balance of probabilities in the case thus far, as the lawyers would say, tends to favour Anwar’s side of the argument.

A mere denial would not be enough to refute the case made by Anwar. The PKR leader’s inferences are rational and substantive.

The evidence he cited of Apco’s ties to despicable leaders like the late Sani Abacha of Nigeria and Narendra Modi of Gujarat in India are compelling enough to put the Najib government on the back foot.

A mere denial of the public relations consultancy’s involvement in the ‘1Malaysia’ concept is not sufficient to dispel concerns.

By proceeding to the stage of trying to cite Anwar for misleading the House sans a substantive refutation that goes beyond perfunctory denial, the government is substituting the force of its brute parliamentary majority for the logic of persuasive argument.

Nothing left to lose

One need not belabour the point that this presently is not the only instance of the government preferring an illogical stand to a persuasive one.

Its stance on persisting with Sodomy II against Dr Chua Soi Lek’s continued freedom from indictment for substantively the same offence Anwar Ibrahim is alleged to have committed is a stark reminder that if power is untrammeled, it will be abused.

But the government is trapped in the claustral mazes of its warped logic.

Once its boosters had decided, some time ago, to tie the noose of ‘Jewish agent’ around Anwar Ibrahim’s neck, it had to go ahead with the decision to arraign him in Parliament for suggesting that ‘1Malaysia’ had its origins in Ehud Barak’s ‘One Israel’ policy.

You can’t call the kettle black and then be seen to be tarred with the same brush.   

Notwithstanding the cogency of the presentation made by Anwar to Parliament that Apco has a case to answer in the tribunals of human rights violations, the government proceeds down a cul de sac of its own making, obviously banking on a perception that the populace will not be bothered about the finer points of the argument.

It’s a calculation that flies in the face of the lessons that the political tsunami of March 2008 was supposed to have taught, essentially, that there’s a limit to the nonsense that voters will tolerate.

Freedom, according perhaps to Umno-BN, is nothing left to lose, as one singer famously put it. Maybe, Umno-BN would tinker with that definition so that freedom is what you can get away with.

Until the next general election, at least.