Anwar recalled the time Karpal visited him in prison and reprimanded him after Anwar’s family and friends had collected up to RM400,000 to pay his legal fees – a sum of which Anwar not only knew nothing about, but one that paled in comparison to the years of work Karpal had put in as well as other expenses he had borne.
“When my brother went to his office to pay him, Karpal asked ‘for what?’
“And when he was told it was for helping me, he chased my brother out. He told my brother to get out from the office,” Anwar said at a ceramah to announce PKR’s candidates for the coming Johor elections.
Anwar said Karpal had told him that he knew all about Anwar’s contributions to society as well as the hardship he had endured. “And he said ‘as a human being, I have values and principles and I am not a man if I took one sen from you’”.
Karpal, a respected senior lawyer who was DAP chairman, was known as the “tiger of Jelutong” after the constituency in Penang that he represented in the Dewan Rakyat from 1978-1999.
He represented Anwar for the latter’s first and second sodomy trials.
Karpal was killed in a road accident in 2014.
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