‘Warning’ no deterrent to student turnout at Anwar’s Australia event: ADELAIDE, Oct 20 — On the surface, an overflowing crowd gathered for an event featuring Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim here appeared a cauldron of discontent, but underneath were compelling messages to peoples and government in Australia and Malaysia. At the Adelaide Festival of Ideas in the South Australian capital “city of churches”, Malaysian students in black T-shirts and sporting white anti-democracy masks and carrying placards conveyed their objection to the suppression of free speech, democracy and exchange of ideas cheered as Anwar arrived at the Bonython Hall at the University of Adelaide for a public interview session with public intellectual Waleed Aly. The focus this year of the festival was on political institutions and where they might have gone wrong. Responding to questions from Waleed on the topic “Dissent and Democracy: An Audience with Anwar Ibrahim”, Anwar’s was the headline event on the final day of the four-day festival. The queue of ticket holders waiting to get in the university’s 920-capacity UNESCO heritage-listed “great hall” snaked around the building. Reluctant to leave were those who missed out when tickets for the free event were snapped up as soon as they were available online. “We are not anti-government,” third-year University of South Australia student and spokesman Jerad Tan, told The Malay Mail Online, implying that the students had not gathered to rally for the opposition. “We are here to voice out our opposition against government seeking to stifle students in their legitimate pursuits of education,” said the member of the Council of International Students Associations. Tan was referring to reports that a “student adviser” purporting to represent Education Australia Malaysia in Sydney had sent an email warning students on scholarship from Malaysia’s Public Service Department (PSD) against attending the Anwar event. The purported warning was a recurring issue. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon in introducing Anwar and Waleed, drew knowing applause when he said: “I would like to thank the Malaysian Government for assisting with publicising this event internationally (through reaction to its purported warning against PSD scholars).” Xenophon, a senator representing South Australia, is a long-time advocate in Malaysia and in Australia for what Anwar represents in the democratic order in Malaysia. Xenophon was detained at LCCT as he arrived to join in advocacy for clean elections, and deported for being a security risk. Another issue that came in for ridicule was the ban in Malaysia on the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims. Waleed, a former member of the Islamic Council of Victoria in Melbourne, had written on the issue in his column in The Age in Melbourne the previous day, drawing a parallel with the “Islamic car” that Proton had mooted six years ago with Iran and Turkey. The column was illustrated by a cartoon of a Proton wholly covered in a burqa except for a slit for its windscreen. Waleed opened the session asking if Anwar had been to the mosque since he arrived. Told that the local mosque had invited Anwar to give the Friday sermon, Waleed asked in jest: “Did you say Allah at any point? (The sermon having been preached in English.)” Anwar: “I did repeatedly, and said in fact that at one time, Muslims and Christians used the word Allah if they chose to do so.” The banter varying in cadence from light-heartedness to intense matters of state, often humorous, raced through little more than an hour — finishing with a few questions from the floor — led by an inquisitor who, apart from being a columnist of The Age, is well regarded as a Muslim intellectual, a lecturer in politics at the global terrorism unit of Monash University, host of a daily “drive” programme on ABC radio, and a regular guest panellist on a somewhat irreverent nightly infotainment programme on commercial TV. Topics ranged from democracy and elections in Malaysia; corruption and accountability; race, religion and government in Malaysia; Alexis de Tocqueville and Democracy in America; Islam and democracy and government; the Arab Spring (“irreversible”). At various junctures, Waleed asked what Anwar would have liked the Australian government to have done; over the student issue, the political culture in Malaysia. To this, Anwar said that while he admired Australia for promoting democracy and freedom, it was also blind to its own excesses and hypocritical in some of its foreign policies. Anwar also met about 150 students from Flinders University, including some PSD scholars, according to Xenophon. Yesterday, he joined a gathering organised by SABM (Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia) Adelaide and the Anwar Ibrahim Club, attended by the Honorary Consulate Malaysia for South Australia Datuk Hassan Salleh. dlvr.it/49YQL8
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:26:28 +0000