The Pakatan Harapan (PH) chairman added that while he was in prison he did not make any special requests, “unlike some people”, and accepted his plight in order to understand the struggles endured by others who had been incarcerated.
“(It was to understand) why they were in jail, why they did not get a good education, why their families experienced terrible conditions,” he said in a speech at a Deepavali event in Klang.
In April 1999, Anwar was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of corruption while in August 2000, he was handed a nine-year jail term for sodomy.
In 2004, he was released after his conviction was overturned. However, he was jailed again in 2014 for sodomy before receiving a royal pardon. He was released in 2018 following PH’s success in the 14th general election (GE14).
Recalling his time in the Sungai Buloh prison, Anwar said the majority of inmates there were poor Malays, though there were also many Indians.
“As a whole, relative to the population, the ratio of Indians in prisons is too high,” he added.
The former Port Dickson MP also said the poorest people in Peninsular Malaysia were ethnic Indians, though Malays made up the majority who are classified as being below the poverty line.
“Numerically, there are fewer poor Indians as there are not as many (Indian people in the country). However, comparatively, among the poor, they are the poorest,” Anwar said, citing statistics from the government’s Economic Planning Unit and Khazanah Research Institute.
Nonetheless, he said, Malaysians nationwide were struggling with the economic climate, with the majority of Malays in the peninsula falling under the B40 category while indigenous communities in Sabah and Sarawak faced problems of their own.
Anwar also dismissed sentiments that MIC’s election manifesto pledged more for the Indian community than the opposition’s, saying PH’s manifesto will not focus on ethnicity.
“Whether you’re Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban, or Kadazan, if you’re facing hardcore poverty, we must help you. Regardless of your race.”