THE second sodomy trial of Anwar Ibrahim will start tomorrow, July 8 Wednesday.
For weeks and weeks in 1999, I recall covering the first sodomy trial, and his earlier trial for corruption. Although the news which came out of the court room then rocked Malaysian politics, scandalised the public with lurid details and even caused violent street protests, the task of covering the trial was a dreary one.
This time round, Mr Anwar is accused of sodomising his former aide, a 23-year old male volunteer Saiful Bukhari Azlan.
In 1999, the former deputy prime minister was alleged to have sodomised his brother-in-law Sukma Dermawan, and his wife's driver, Azizan Abu Bakar.
The two trials are closely related in that the 'corruption case' was not about bribes, but abuse of power. He was accused of using his position as deputy premier to ask police to force some witnesses to retract allegations over his supposed secret sexual lifestyle.
As every one knows, Anwar was found guilty for both corruption and sodomy. He served six years in the corruption case (four years in jail, two years remitted for good behaviour). The court later reversed judgement on the sodomy case and set him free.
A typical day in 1999 covering the trials were often like this:
- Join the queue by 7.30am, and stand in line for an hour or else there may not be enough seats inside.
- Due to the limited seats, police will allow in only about 15 reporters (not photographers). And then there was space for some 20 Anwar family members AND members of the public. Once inside, one might have another one to two hours to wait before the judge, the Attorney-General and his lawyers, defence lawyers, Anwar and the judge arrived. The judge in the corruption case was Augustine Paul, and for the sodomy trial, Ariffin Jaka.
- And then the reporter must get ready for daily surprises like the trial being cancelled suddenly. This happened several times when Anwar did not turn up because he complained of toothache, or the judge had to attend a seminar at the last minute, or a close relative of a lawyer passed away somewhere.
- There is usually a break of about half an hour in late morning before an hour's worth of lunch. We all rushed out for teh tarik!
- And then it was more arguments by lawyers and dozens of witnesses took the stand.
The highlight must be when one day a mattress was brought into the court!
- The afternoon sessions were worse, as post-lunch sleepiness crept in.
Some of us actually fell asleep during this time but not before telling other colleagues to wake them up in case some "sexy" issues or quotes crop up.
Yes, you have guessed it. We got bored most of the time because some of the stuff got repeated dozens of times.
I must have heard Anwar and his lawyers shouting "political conspiracy" hundreds of times.
Judge Augustine Paul, of course, uttered the infamous words "Not relevant!", when some evidence were presented by the defence lawyers. The words became car bumper stickers!
- To keep alert levels high, some of the daily newspapers sent one reporter for the morning session and another for the afternoon one.
- I was quite lucky in that I didn't have to write everything myself. I was working for the Reuters wire agency then and called in all the important stuff that came out to my colleagues in the office, which they then wrote up.
Remember, this was before the days of the smartphones, Blackberries and Twitter. Even SMS texting was not that popular then.
- At the end of the court day (around 5pm), I would have to travel back to my office which is located about 1.5km away from the Kuala Lumpur court complex.
I cannot remember how long the two trials lasted, but I was lucky as that duty was rotated every two weeks between another colleague and myself.
This is not to say I did not learn anything from the court experience.
I learnt a lot about how the court system worked and the legalese that ding dongs between judges and lawyers.
Also, I got to know quite a few international authors who had since become my favourites like Wilbur Smith, Lincoln Preston, Stephen Frey and James Rollins. You see, I had the luck of sitting beside a reporter who was a big fan of fictional thrillers. (Up until then, I only read science fiction authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg.)
Indeed, most of the reporters brought in books and magazines to read everyday, so we shared them in between the big yawns and the half-snores.
So now, another decade, another trial.
I am just glad I won't be covering it again.