Before the law is the doorkeeper - Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
How do you prove innocence?
AFTER the video clip of VK Lingam was uploaded last year, Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Badawi promised retribution. Abdullah upon seeing the video was least concerned about the matter beforehand, that is, the video’s contents: lawyers, judges, politicians and businessmen conspiring to line up their own circle of people in the bench. He was more eager to find the person who made the recording and the person who subsequently exposed the conspiracy, Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader.
Said Abdullah: “If the evidence show what transpired in the video was not the truth, action should be taken against those who released the video, as well as all those who lodged ACA reports.”
Today nearly a year later, Abdullah would reverse the logic in his argument. One man named Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 23, had lodged a police report of sodomy against Anwar. The table had reversed. Thus, when Abdullah was asked about the veracity in the Saiful’s accusation, his reply on Jun 29, 2008, and reported in the New Straits Times whose allegiance is always to the government of the day was this:
“The police are the ones who will determine whether the report is true or not. It is not something that we can determine. He will definitely deny it. That is common for someone who has been accused.”
In last year’s VK Lingam case Anwar had brought the accusation against the government, after which a panel of judges have confirmed the video’s veracity. But nothing so far yet has happened to Lingam et al. Today, in the reversal of roles, the sodomy case against Anwar is pending and he must run.
Anwar had been warned. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) had written extensively about a legal and bureaucratic institution that is as vile as it is relentless and faceless. He wrote that nearly a century ago. Anwar, it is apparent from his remarks to Malaysiakini, had read of the warnings. “Welcome,” he said, “to Kafka land.”
In The Trial (published 1925), Kafka had preceded Abdullah in nearly the exact same words that the latter would use almost a century later. Below is the relevant part in the novel in which Kafka put those words into the mouths of Josef K (in many of the man’s works the protagonist is never fully named).
But, before that, this is how Kafka, who always had great opening lines, starts the book:
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K. because, one morning for no good reason he was arrested.”
Anwar must have found that very familiar. Then, near to the novel’s end, when K., already worn down by an arrest that didn’t quite make sense and worn down by the police, the lawyers and the courts, he goes to see a priest. For a man in that state, one would expect confession and even solace in prayers. But there was none of the sort because confession and prayer presuppose guilt.
“What are you holding in your hand? Is it a prayer book?” the priest asked.
“No,” answered K., “it’s an album of the city’s tourist sights.”
“Put it down,” said the priest.
K. threw it away with such force that it flapped open and rolled across the floor, tearing its pages.
“Do you know your case is going badly?” asked the priest.
“That’s how it seems to me too. I’ve expended a lot of effort on it, but so far with no result. I do still have some documents to submit.”
“How do you imagine it will end?”
“At first I thought it was bound to end well,” said K., “but now I have my doubts about it. I don’t know how it will end. Do you?”
“I don’t,” said the priest, “but I fear it will end badly. You are considered guilty. Your case will probably not even go beyond a minor court. Provisionally at least, your guilt is seen as proven.”
“But I’m not guilty,” said K., “there’s been a mistake. …
Said the priest: “That is how the guilty speaks.”
Kafka puts it more eloquently than Abdullah of course. Suppose Anwar goes to court, again, this is what Kafka has warned about justice.
“Don’t fool yourself,” said the priest.
“How would I be fooling myself?” asked K.
“You fool yourself in the court,” said the priest. “there is self-deceit in the opening paragraphs to the law. In front of the law is a doorkeeper.”
Kafka then goes on to write that the passage of a case through the courts goes through many doorkeepers because there are many doors. Saiful is Anwar’s doorkeeper; after that the Inspector General of Police; Gani Patail, the Attorney General, and onwards to Abdullah. Note that the first doorkeeper is Saiful, a man they say is a coffee boy.
Welcome to Kafka land, did you say Anwar? This, below, is the Malaysiakini report although not entirely well captured because of the fragments in Anwar’s remarks:
“It’s surreal that this is happening,” said Anwar…. “You would think that the authorities would be chastened by the shocks dealt them at the general election last March such that they would not stoop this low to defame me this time. Well, welcome to Kafka land!”
Accused of raping a man, nearly thrice his age, there is little escape. Anwar, you see, your guilt is already proven. This is because innocence is not for proving. Innocence is not provable.
Josef K was, in the end, sentenced to death, by stabbing. The novel’s concluding paragraph:
“The hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.’s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. “Like a dog!” he said, as if the shame of it should outlive him.
Endnote
With police report and arrest pending, Anwar’s plans now look badly derailed. Between two critical dates, Jul 5 and Sep 16, were to be a series of scheduled events. Saiful’s police report on Jun 28 is a serious disruption to the plans.
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July 5: 1 million-strong rally against high petrol prices
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July?: Final confirmation to lodge report against Inspector General of Police and Attorney General for fabrication of evidences in 1998-99 trial of Anwar (this has now been brought forward).
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August?: Parliamentary seat vacated, Anwar to contest.
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August?: First group of MPs to publicly join Anwar and Pakatan Rakyat, the coalition of opposition parties.
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Sept?: Third and final session of Parliament for the year resumes.
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Sept 16: Deadline for all crossovers to Anwar and Pakatan.
Postscript
HORROR: Kafka Revisionism. Found in the New York Review of Books:
“It is now necessary to state some accepted truths about Franz Kafka, and the Kafkaesque…. Kafka’s work lies outside literature: it is not fully part of the history of European fiction. He has no predecessors—his work appears as if from nowhere—and he has no true successors…. These fictions express the alienation of modern man; they are a prophecy of a) the totalitarian police state, and b) the Nazi Holocaust. His work expresses a Jewish mysticism, a non-denominational mysticism, an anguish of man without God. His work is very serious. He never smiles in photographs…. It is crucial to know the facts of Kafka’s emotional life when reading his fiction. In some sense, all his stories are autobiographical. He is a genius, outside ordinary limits of literature, and a saint, outside ordinary limits of human behaviour. All of these truths, all of them, are wrong.”
