Mr Lim Guan Eng, the Penang Chief Minister, purportedly made the following pronouncement:
Menurut ketua menteri Pulau Pinang itu lagi, tiada beza sama ada Ketua Umum PKR Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim dibebaskan daripada tuduhan liwat atau dipenjarakan, jika ketiga-tiga parti tidak mampu menunaikan komitmen dan janji.
I totally concur with LGE. It does not make much difference whether former Deputy PrimeMinister Anwar Ibrahim goes in or stay free over the sodomy charges filed against him by his own ex-personal assistant Saiful. We will still be scarred - we already are - and marked by the Part 2 of the Sodomy episode, our children and grandchildren and their children will be cursing us for the way we have been carrying ourselves over this matter. For BN and Umno, it's not going to make much difference. Prime Minister Najib Razak's main concerns are not Anwar Ibrahim's jail term or justice for Saiful, it's the growing dissent within his own ranks and the growing unhappiness of his old boss, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Pakatan Rakyat, as Guan Eng rightly put it, no longer need Anwar Ibrabim like it used to. The Opposition coalition will have a field wheteher its de facto leader is punished for butting Saiful or vindicted by the Court but it's not going to count much come the next General Election. Even with Anwar leading the pact now, the coalition has been weakening and sometimes in disarray. Anwar himself is not who he used to be. In 1998, he ignited the local Reformasi and was almost as successful as the Reformasi in Indonesia; in recent years, it has been a challenge to get a few thousand people to take to the streets to help fight his cause. At the UM student protest last month, a few hundred came forward.
