COMMENT “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail,” was the famous remark of an American defence secretary who disdained to know the contents of intercepted mail which would have aided the intelligence gathering operations of his country.

“Mediators don’t allow others to eavesdrop,” may well serve as a recap of the above moral constraint with respect to the substance of the offer of a deputy prime minister’s post to Anwar Ibrahim by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

It cannot be reasonably assumed that ties between the leaders of Indonesia and Malaysia are cozy enough to permit Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to inquire of Vice-President Jusuf Kalla of Indonesia whether such an offer was indeed made.

The Malaysian DPM may or may not be feigning ignorance that such an offer was made to Anwar through intermediary Jusuf. 

The Indonesian would be violating the punctilio that governs his mediation role if he were to disclose details.     

Jusuf ( right ) was the channel for the back-and-forth that took place between Najib and Anwar just before and after the general election in Malaysia of May 5, 2013.

A curious combination of confidence in a Pakatan Rakyat victory and anxiety that the ruling Umno-BN would not relinquish power even if defeated at the polls must have motivated Anwar to resort to Jusuf as the go-between.

Jusuf, who was well-heeled in Golkar, was and is friendly to both Anwar and Najib; his ties to the former stemming from personal regard and to the latter from a kindred fealty (like Najib, the Indonesian is Bugis).

Jusuf obtained from Anwar the promise that Pakatan would accept the results of the polls and from Najib, the public assurance, rendered when he announced Parliament's dissolution on April 3, 2013, that Umno-BN would accept the results.

This pantomime, one played out in public and the other privately conveyed through mediator Jusuf, took place against a backdrop where the public had knowledge of only the PM’s gesture but not Anwar’s reciprocation.

The fragility of the arrangement became public knowledge immediately after the polls when the Asian Wall Street Journal ( AWSJ ) published Jusuf’s dismay at the “other side” - meaning Pakatan - not keeping its promise to accept the results.                

Anwar, at the time of the AWSJ report,  was already leading public protests against alleged electoral fraud.

Subversive ripples

Now that Anwar is in jail for sodomy, the alleged offer of the DPM’s post to him by Najib becomes an issue with subversive ripples for the entire question of his conviction.

The muddle is accentuated by what PKR insiders said about the content of  the back channel diplomacy conducted by Jusuf five weeks after the polls when Anwar was in Jakarta simultaneously with Najib.

An Anwar refusal to meet personally with Najib, who was on a private visit to Jusuf, saw the Indonesian VP reportedly pleading with Anwar to accept Najib’s offer.

Jusuf was said by PKR insiders - admittedly, scarcely nonpartisan conduits - to have expressed puzzlement that Anwar could spurn an offer from someone with a reportedly high regard for Anwar's ability, especially as finance minister (1990-98) when he was in the position under Dr Mahathir Mohamad premiership before being sacked and tried for corruption and sodomy in late 1998.

All this, of course, can only be confirmed or denied by the man who did the mediation - Jusuf Kalla.

Now, one party languishes in jail and another is safely ensconced as VP of Indonesia.

Given their friendship, the acute disparity in their respective situations does indeed cry out for clarifying intervention.

Doubtless, connoisseurs of the moral dilemmas thrown up by this situation may find much to exercise their muses but if conscience, as Wolfgang Goethe observed, is the virtue of observers, not agents of action, then Jusuf may reasonably shed the scruples against eavesdropping on his role as mediator.

This is one instance where mediators ought to allow others to eavesdrop.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.