KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 9 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad slammed his former protégé Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim for claiming the country’s laws are archaic and need to be replaced with western laws in line with fundamental human rights.

The former prime minister took to his widely-read blog, chedet.cc, yesterday where he heaped scorn on the West’s fight for all sorts of freedoms following Anwar’s recent interview on BBC over his second sodomy trial.

In his posting titled “Lapok [Outdated]”, Dr Mahathir (picture) compared Anwar’s sodomy case to that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the scandal-tainted former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who was sacked following a rape claim by a US hotel worker last year.

Dr Mahathir, who served the country for 22 years, seemed to rant against all freedoms as advocated by Anwar, who has repeatedly pledged an overhaul of Malaysia’s judicial system to protect fundamental human rights if his Pakatan Rakyat (PR) bloc forms the next government in elections widely expected to be called this year.

Starting with France’s historical fight for freedom under the battle cry “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” Dr Mahathir then raced through the West’s alleged push for all kinds of freedom, from the right to vote to the right to engage in what he called free sex.

He said that Western society had awarded unlimited freedoms, even to the detriment of humanity, and that they were now looking eastwards to expand their world view and philosophy.

“As usual, what Westerners create they regard as for the good of all humanity. And with that they launched efforts to expand this concept of freedom and equality,” the retired doctor said.

He noted that Westerners observed that the strongest opposition came from Muslims and went about enlisting those Muslims who would fight for their cause for them and replace normal and Islamic laws, which they portrayed as archaic, with Western laws.

Anwar, who has been projecting himself a Muslim liberal leader to the West, had labelled Malaysia’s sodomy laws as “archaic”.

“And many Muslim Malaysians now believe such politicians should be picked to govern Malaysia,” the still influential 86-year-old said, without stating the name of the prominent local politicians.

But, he said, the West still had laws that safeguarded the most basic of the victim’s rights, pointing to Strauss-Kahn’s case again.

The Frenchman had been sacked from the IMF following the rape allegation although he was not prosecuted.

“In Malaysia when sodomy victims report their case, the accused should be penalised by a court of law. This is not archaic because the west also practises this,” he said.

Dr Mahathir appeared to push the case for Anwar to be convicted.

He said the High Court judge may have acquitted the 64-year-old Umno-turned-PKR leader on technical grounds, but it did not mean a crime did not happen.

Trial judge Datuk Zabidin Mohd Diah, in announcing his decision to acquit Anwar, said the DNA evidence had been compromised.

The Attorney-General filed a formal appeal on January 20 but the Court of Appeal is still waiting for the judge to send in his written grounds of judgment. Zabidin has eight weeks or roughly two months to do so.

Although Anwar has said he is not worried about the polls, he and the three-party PR coalition would have a tough time wooing voters, especially fence sitters, with the case shadowing their election campaign.