Ten Years in Prison, and He Came Back Smiling — What Kind of Strength Is "Move On"?
I asked Anwar what gave him the strength to get to where he is today.
He answered with one line: "Move on! Forget the past!"
The man who said it had been imprisoned twice, for nearly ten years in total. The first time in 1998, the second in 2015, on the same kind of charge. He fell from Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia into a prison cell — and then walked all the way back from that cell to Putrajaya, and became Prime Minister. In between stood Mahathir, who had promised before the election to hand over power in two years, and in the end did not. For a while, Anwar's premiership looked finished.
Most people, telling that story, would carry resentment. There was none in the answer he gave me. Just four words: move on, forget the past.
I've interviewed a lot of politicians, and anyone can say the words "let it go." But coming from a man who actually served ten years and was broken by the same charge twice, the words carry a different weight.
I came to think that Anwar's "move on" isn't the same thing as the ordinary "never mind, don't dwell on it." For most people, letting go means pressing the thing down and pretending it doesn't hurt. Anwar's version is more like an allocation of resources. He understands clearly that dwelling on the past spends his most limited assets — time, attention, energy — on a game that can no longer be changed. Rather than pour them into hatred, take them back and invest them in what can still be changed. For a man in his seventies who has only just reached power, he can't afford to lose that energy.
He told me one more line, about himself: "Be resilient, like bamboo." He even has a painting by that name. The image fits. Bamboo doesn't take the force head-on — it bends, and springs back. When the wind is strong it bows low; when the wind passes it stands straight again. A man who can bend back after ten years in prison relies not on rigidity, but on that kind of resilience.
When the conversation turned to family, his tone changed completely. Speaking of his wife, Wan Azizah — a qualified ophthalmologist — he said, "She is a perfect woman, and my life companion. We listen to each other, we talk." A man treated so brutally in politics, back in his private life, talks about listening and conversation. I suspect his ability to move on is perhaps not unrelated to having someone like that behind him.
"Move on" sounds like a line of self-help. But spoken by a man who served ten years and could still walk back smiling to the center of power, it isn't self-help. It's a calculated choice — to move limited energy off a past that can't be changed, and onto a future that still can.