By Nehru Sathiamoorthy
VETERAN journalist A. Kadir Jasin recently made an observation about Anwar Ibrahim which corresponded closely with my own long-held view of the man.
The observation, made in an article titled “Anwar’s foes big and small,” was simple: Anwar Ibrahim has no friends. All of his friends will eventually become his foes.
The trigger that brought this observation to Kadir’s mind, seems to be the trouble that Rafizi, as well as Rafizi’s former aide James Chai, are having with the Anwar’s government after their relationship become strained.
According to Kadir, many of those who were once devoted to Anwar would eventually not only leave him, but often become his adversaries. Among the names he mentioned were Tian Chua, Chandra Muzaffar, Ibrahim Ali, Hishamuddin Rais and Syed Husin Ali. These were not casual acquaintances. They were individuals who stood beside him during some of the most turbulent moments in Malaysian political history, particularly during the years of the Reformasi movement in Malaysia.
Yet over time the pattern repeated itself. Those who once stood closest to him gradually drifted away, and in many cases became his critics.
I personally made the same observation about Anwar some time ago, especially when it came to Raja Petra Kamarudin.
Raja Petra was also an important figure of Reformasi. After Anwar’s fall in the late 1990s, Raja Petra became one of his staunchest defenders. Through his portal Malaysia Today, he played a significant role in shaping public opinion during a time when mainstream media was tightly controlled. In many ways, Malaysia Today was one of the key factors that helped weaken the old political order under Barisan Nasional and set the conditions for the eventual rise of Anwar and the Reformasi movement.
Despite that history, Raja Petra eventually died in exile in the United Kingdom, even after Anwar had come to power. His portal, which had once been instrumental in shaping the Reformasi narrative, remains banned in Malaysia even after his death.
Even if Raja Petra and Anwar had a falling out, considering their shared history, one might reasonably think that Raja Petra — or at least his portal after his demise — would have fared somewhat better. If not for political reasons, then at least as an act of remembering an old ally in kinder terms once they are no longer around in this world.
But that did not happen.
When I think about why Anwar has this reputation for being unable to sustain friendships with those who were once devoted to him, two possible explanations come to mind. The first reason is that the problem lies with him. The second reason is that the problem lies with his friends.
The most important condition for sustaining a meaningful friendship is that we must see ourselves in our friends. Other than see ourselves in them , we must also like — or at the very least understand — what we see.
Transactional friendships are easy to sustain. We don’t have to see ourselves in those whom we have only a transactional relationship with, or even like what we see. All that is required is a certain level of politeness and social maintenance. You attend an old boys’ reunion from time to time. You participate in the occasional company team-building event. You go to their wedding, or to their children’s wedding when you are invited. If you do these things consistently enough, you can maintain such relationships for decades.
These relationships might not require much, but they also likely do not mean much. They exist largely as part of a social network. At most, you might expect them to say a good word about you, attend an event that you organize, cover for you at work, or perhaps look after your pet if you have to go outstation for a few days.
True friendship however, is something else entirely.
A genuine friendship endures even when fortunes change, or when distance separates people. Even if they are out of sight, a true friend is never out of mind. And when a true friend is gone, it will paradoxically be both as if they never left, although you will miss them deeply as if a part of yourself is missing. To have a true friend, you will need to know your friend well enough to see yourself in them — and what is more, you will also like yourself better the more you see yourself in them.
If you see yourself in your friends, you can understand the choices that they make, even if they are not the choices you would have made yourself. Whether those choices turn out well or badly does not really affect the friendship. Difference in status or fortune will affect all other forms of relationship except the ones that are true. When you have a true relationship with someone, you will not find it hard to recognise that it was simply the choices you made that led to the difference in your circumstances — but in essence, there is no significant difference between your friend and you. If fate had arranged things differently, it could just as easily have been you who made the choices and be in the position that your friends are in.
If Anwar has no enduring friendships, and the reason lies with him, it might be because he considers himself too exceptional to see himself in others.
In many ways, Anwar is indeed exceptional as a political figure. In my reckoning, he might well be the greatest politician that our country has ever produced. As a politician, Anwar is an Apex Winner – he is someone who seems almost born to compete and win against everyone around him, and the contest he chose to fight was the highest contest known to man — politics.
Except for war itself, there is perhaps no greater arena of competition among men. And according to the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, there may not even be much difference between the two. War, after all, may simply be the continuation of politics by other means.
Winners, especially Apex Winners like Anwar, always stand alone. One cannot spend a lifetime striving to rise above everyone else, defeating rivals and overcoming opponents, and at the same time expect to maintain deep and equal relationships with all those around them.
Anwar’s life has been a series of battles. He punched his way up from nothing, and when he was close to the top, he was was broken, beaten incarcerated and humiliated. Yet even after all that, he remained so undaunted that he fought from a position of extreme disadvantage for more than twenty-five years before eventually recovering everything he had lost and rising to the top of Malaysian politics.
A man forged through such struggle might be forgiven for not easily seeing the same spirit or winning quality that he has in others.
But it is also possible that the difficulty lies not only with Anwar, but with those who gather around him.
At the end of the day, to see yourself as the equal of someone who is not your equal can also be a form of injustice.
We may never fully understand what it took for Anwar to become Anwar. What we do know however, is that he was not simply born as the man we see today. He had to become him. And becoming him must have required years of sacrifice, discipline, dedication and transformation.
As Kadir Jasin himself observed, Anwar has knack of attracting admirers, disciples and fans — or as Kadir put it, devotees — likely because they subconsciously see qualities in him that they also see in themselves.
But it may be that while they see themselves in him, he does not see himself in them. Perhaps because it was only he who put in the sacrifices required to become who he is, while many of those around him were merely admirers, dilettantes, or wishful thinkers.
Not everything that glitters is gold. To the untrained eye, glass can look no different from a diamond.
The condition for meaningful and enduring friendship is that we see ourselves in our friends and like what we see. But that recognition must be grounded in reality, not in wishful thinking.
If we assume that our friends are just like us simply because they are our friends — when in reality we have not invested the same effort, sacrifice or transformation that they have — then the gap between perception and reality will eventually create a psychological tension that strains the relationship.
And when that tension grows large enough, even the strongest friendships begin to break.
(The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of BebasNews.)
Sumber: bebasnews.my
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