What the Rejection of Anwar Ibrahim's Petition for Pardon Tells Us About Malaysia's Royal Pardons System

Abstract

On 16 March 2015, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s petition for pardon from what he claims was a politically-motivated conviction for sodomising his male aid was rejected by Malaysia’s King, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. In Malaysia’s Federal jurisdiction, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong exercises the prerogative power to grant clemency or pardon on advice from a specially-constituted Pardons Board, consisting of up to five members.In this article, I describe the way in which the Malaysian Pardons Boards operate, and propose a set of plausible hypotheses explaining why the rejection of Anwar’s application for pardon, submitted on his behalf by his wife and daughters, came as no surprise. Despite arguments in the Malaysian media being made in favour of the purported independence of the Pardons Board as a decision-making body and the pre-eminence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong as the final decision maker on pardon, this article demonstrates argues that through its composition and procedures, the Federal Pardons Board that disposed of Anwar’s petition is open to the perception that it may be subject to significant political influence from the Barisan Nasional government in power in Malaysia.