Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is on the comeback trail. He is preparing for elections in 2009 by crisscrossing his country to bolster the ranks of his Keadilan Party. But Ibrahim suspects that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi may advance elections to 2008 to keep him out. He cannot hold public office until June next year because of a court order. He spoke with BW’s Dinesh Narayanan while on a private visit to India recently. Excerpts:

How smooth do you think your comeback will be?
It is not easy. The system is not free. Elections are not fair. And there is no free media. Judiciary is not independent. How do you vote for the democratic process to change? But I think we can (come back to power).

Do you believe your party has a base big enough to get you elected?
Yes. But the media is not portraying it that way. I spend a lot of time — six days a week — in the districts. I go from village to village, district to district. I am quite optimistic. It is not going to be easy when you are dealing with politicians with billions of dollars and the entire machinery of the media at their disposal. But I think we will make a major impact.

You were identified with western institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF in the 1990s. Do you believe that the policies you followed then are valid now, especially since the two institutions’ policy prescriptions for developing countries have been drawing a lot of flak?
It depends on who you talk to. Mahathir told Muslims that I am a Jewish agent and to the Americans that I am a Muslim extremist. I cannot be both. Now, the son-in-law of the prime minister calls me a Jewish agent as well as an American agent, a traitor to the Malays, and that I am appeasing both Indian and Chinese interests. So, he said he will hound me. I rebutted with an Elvis Presley song, ‘You ain’t nothing but a hound dog’.

Factually, I was the chairman of the development committee of the World Bank and the IMF. I was instrumental in the regime of James Wolfensohn and Gordon Brown in the debt conciliation programme for highly indebted countries. When I was the finance minister, I had publicly said in Jakarta that when disbursing funds, we couldn’t impose conditionalities that cause hardships to people. In 1991, we had a deficit budget; in 1992, a balanced budget and; in 1993 a surplus one. The moment we became surplus, I ceased taking funding from the bank. It is on record. By 1998, I was in jail and, in 1999, Mahathir went back to the bank for funds. But publicly, he is anti-World Bank and I am pro-World Bank. It is not correct to say that I subscribed to the IMF and the World Bank policies. What did I subscribe to? Governance, yes. Anti-corruption laws, yes.

Actually, I used the opportunity to tighten the screws on governance, policies, open tenders, and disciplining the banks. What’s wrong with that? Can only the IMF talk about anti-corruption? Why can’t we talk about anti-corruption?