Mahathir vs Anwar

Just when one thought the worst
Happened in distant times and climes,
Faraway lands and different chimes,
It dawned on Malaysian sensibility,
That a bathos of the lowest order,
Was ascending from the depths,
To shock society at the highest level.

What was this assault
On our smugness?
It can't be!
How could the Number One
From the ruling set,
Be accusing his Number Two
Of kacang putih acts,
Normally scrawled on toilet walls,
And whispered about in
Fully residential halls?
How could this be happening,
To songkok and tudung wearers,
Who pride themselves
As moral standard bearers?
How not courtroom details,
In collusion with thick denials,
Served to rake up forgotten
Historical baggage?
From Hang Tuah to Tun Teja,
From Pahang to Melaka ...
Or its appendage?

Disclosures this sensational,
In recent memory were too risible,
To appear in mainstream media, sensible,
Though standard fare for Bacaria,
Street talk and Bukit Aman cafeteria.

As the sandiwara among the saudara
Unfolded, the line between sleazy street
And prim print turned effete,
Marking a watershed,
Since when the Press
Had not been able to look back
On the good old hack;
Now previously unprintable matter
Has become common media barter,
Rivaling Mastika banter.

The country's highest institutions,
Bystanders and partisans,
Jostled in the corridors of credibility,
Who to believe, who to give sympathy?
Do you believe in the conspiracy theory?
Or do you accept the guilty probability?
Are the courts' hands smirched?
Or are our faces wearing a worrying smirk?