PAS vice president Datuk Dr Mahfuz Omar said the opposition will “mobilise the issue” only after the state election as the scandal would get no play with Sarawak voters more concerned about the chief minister’s alleged corruption and abuse of power.
Mahfuz said PR already had a plan to get the most political mileage out of the issue but declined to elaborate further.
“This is a simple issue,” he said. “Malaysian society will not accept this culture of slander.”
The Pokok Sena Mp said the public has always been sceptical of the many allegations levelled against Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, citing their reaction to his first sodomy conviction in 1998 and the ongoing Sodomy II trial.
“If everyone believed the accusations (against him), Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim he wouldn’t be where he is now,” he said.
PKR vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar agreed that the video worked against BN as many politicians linked to the ruling coalition had been implicated in the scandal.
But she said it was equally important to use the opportunity to remind voters there were more substantial issues to focus on, such as the need for political and economic reform in the country.
“It has to be done hand-in-hand, not just so much to explain that BN is really utilising gutter politics,” the Lembah Pantai MP said.
“At the end of the day, we have that double responsibility not only to defend the truth but also to try to bring politics to a more elevated level.”
Nurul Izzah nonetheless admitted that certain voters, especially Malays, cast ballots based more on sentiment than issues and stressed that PR needed to “remain relevant to the people’s emotions”.
DAP national organising secretary Teresa Kok said PR will harness the increased interest in the opposition following the sex video’s disclosure, citing greater turnout at PR ceramah recently.
“Although it (the video) created some doubts in the minds of many, most people that I talk to don’t think Anwar did it,” she said.
The Seputeh MP explained that the highly publicised scandal gave PR the chance to reach out and make their case to people who would not otherwise be interested in other issues.
The current sex video controversy has made an impact on the public, with a Merdeka Center poll a week ago revealing that Anwar and PR may be in trouble with voters.
The independent pollster found that while most people rejected the video’s authenticity, which purportedly features Anwar having sex with a foreign prostitute, a significant number were unsure.
Adding to the bleak outcome, many of the 504 respondents surveyed also felt the entire episode, which first came to light on March 21, would affect their confidence in the opposition pact.
The telephone survey between March 24 and 27 has an estimated 4.40 per cent margin of error.
A total of 504 respondents were selected via random stratified sampling method along the lines of state, ethnicity, gender and age.
In total, 51 per cent did not believe that Anwar was the man in the 21-minute recording while a significant 29 per cent were unsure.
A total of 17 per cent believed in the video, with three per cent saying they strongly believed that Anwar was the man in the recording.
Anwar and his PR comrades have been on damage control mode since the video’s release but pundits have predicted that this latest scandal would cause a chink in the pact’s armour.
Denying he is the man in the video, Anwar has called the recording a “scurrilous attack” against him, his family and the opposition.
But the video, coupled with Anwar’s ongoing Sodomy II trial and several revelations made by his arch-nemesis, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in his latest book could very well be the last straw for PR supporters, who have grown increasingly disillusioned with the pact since Election 2008.
In recent interviews with The Malaysian Insider, political analysts predicted that the video would likely complicate PR’s Sarawak campaign and hamper efforts to arrest its slide in popularity.
They said that while the allegations remain unproven and the video’s origins murky, the all but certain eventual leak of the recording onto the Internet will likely dent Anwar’s image.
A two-minute clip of the recording has since been posted on video sharing site, YouTube.
But a majority of respondents agreed that former Malacca chief minister Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik’s admission that he was responsible for the video meant that the ruling coalition had likely masterminded the scandal, with 39 per cent of the 504 respondents blaming BN and Umno for the video.
But many also doubted the possibility, with 38 per cent saying they did not know.
Only 18 per cent said BN was not involved in the controversial video which shows a man with a striking resemblance to Anwar having sex with a woman believed to be a foreign prostitute.
Anwar was sacked as deputy prime minister in 1998 and convicted of sodomy and corruption for abuse of power.
He spent six years in prison before the country’s top court overturned the conviction in 2004.
After his release, Anwar led PKR, DAP and PAS to unprecedented gains in Election 2008, denying BN its traditional two-thirds parliamentary majority.
But he was briefly arrested later that same year and charged again in court on for sodomy, this time involving a former male aide. Anwar has denied the charge.
The charismatic leader is now on a nine-day tour of Sarawak ahead of state polls on April 16.
