In September 1998 Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was charged with four counts of committing corrupt practice by directing police to obtain statements from two witnesses, denying sexual misconduct by him. (Charges of sodomy and having an affair with the wife of one of his officials were dropped as the prosecution closed its case.) The trial continues at press time, with developments regularly in the news. Kuala Lumpur lawyer Jerald Allen Gomez, a 1994 alumnus of the Commonwealth Exchange Program, files this lawyer’s-eye-view of the proceedings.

Reports