To hear some middle-class Malaysians talk about Anwar Ibrahim, you would think he was the devil made flesh, guilty of crimes against decent society ranging from gross financial corruption and sexual deviancy to Islamic fanaticism. Such is the effect of seven relentless years of government-inspired calumny.

In person, Anwar has an impish face and a little beard, but no horns or pitchfork. The former deputy prime minister, finance minister and leader of Malaysia’s political reform movement quietly sits down at the breakfast table in the half-empty Petrus restaurant next to his wife, the reformist MP Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.