When her husband and PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim was found guilty of sodomy last Friday, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail’s biggest fear was that he would be locked up immediately.

“It was deja vu in a sense. Sadness that it happened again in my life.

“I was emotional because I thought they were going to take him straight to the lock-up.

“I couldn’t (take it) actually,” she paused... “I can still feel it now. I couldn’t hold back my tears.”

Wan Azizah also thought of her children - now all grown up compared with 16 years ago when Anwar was incarcerated for six years for sodomy and corruption, and how he would cope now as a 67-year-old man.

And then, the president of one of Malaysia’s largest political parties thought of what the conviction would mean to the nation.

It was this, and her children’s encouragement, that pushed her to accept the Kajang by-election candidacy for PKR in Anwar’s place, since his conviction disqualified him from contesting.

‘Mak Tok’ Wan Azizah

“To be honest, when the verdict was delivered, I thought we must do something to save this country. If we leave it like this, we become part of the reason why the country is like this,” she said.

“When I was in school, I thought of the judiciary... and I thought I can get justice.

“But when it happened to me, my family, to Anwar, even recently, we can longer be silent.

“Whatever it is, I am a Malaysian with rights and responsibilities to this country,” she said.

Day 1 of the Kajang by-election campaign yesterday saw PKR calling the polls a “referendum” against the “injustice against Anwar”.

A vote for Wan Azizah is a vote against judicial interference, PKR said.

A soft-spoken woman who lights up when she shows Malaysiakini pictures of her six grandchildren uploaded on her family WhatsApp group, ‘Rumah Segambut’, Wan Azizah is a shoo-in for such a campaign.

“I will continue this struggle. I will still play with my grandkids, you can’t take that away from me. I really enjoy them!

“But this is my responsibility as a Malaysian and party president,” she said, adding that she is doing this for her children and grandchildren.

‘Satellites in BN don’t understand suffering’

The BN, however, is having none of it.

BN Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin was quick to warn against the fishing of sympathy votes for a “political puppet”, while Wanita chief Shahrizat Abdul Jalil dubbed the polls “Anwar’s family playground”.

Asked about this, Wan Azizah literally waved off the comments, smiled, and delivered a hard-hitting rejoinder.

“Now it is Anwar’s family, but it could be any family. Who are the forgotten families that I represent?

“The downtrodden represented? Khairy (right in photo ), he has a good life. He was a son of a diplomat. He has a privileged life, Alhamdulillah, he should use it for the better,” she said.

She said that unlike “the elite”, Anwar’s sudden sacking from the cabinet and incarceration was difficult and it taught her the meaning of suffering, hers as well as others.

In any case, Wan Azizah said, sympathy does not automatically translate into votes.

Is she prepared to go through another round if Anwar’s appeal to the Federal Court fails and he goes back to jail for five years?

“Let’s wait. Please, let’s not talk about it, we wait for the Federal Court appeal, yes?

“I get choked up thinking about it. I don’t want to and I hope it will not happen. I pray it won’t, but God tests us in many ways, this test is so heavy.”

'Kajang Move alive despite Anwar's exit'

Interview by Aidila Razak, Kow Kwan Yee, Zulaikha Zulkifli and Radzi Razak.