“I am tired of smiling, after this…” Shahrizat threatened jokingly, rolling up her sleeves to cheering supporters before adding “and I have not even shifted my sarong yet” SUING IN COURT
1. Malaysian politics of today is frequently punctuated with court actions. In particular there are now a lot of litigation cases. And the amounts sued for invariably run into millions of Ringgit. Malaysian politics of today is frequently punctuated with court actions. In particular there are now a lot of litigation cases. And the amounts sued for invariably run into millions of Ringgit. Mariam Mokhtar ‘People First, Performance Now’ has been replaced by ‘Cover-ups in corruption’.
It is doubtful that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak believed a word of what he said, in the closing ceremony of Umno’s 2011 general assembly last week. He claimed to have achieved his four objectives for the party conference: Umno was united, the party was geared up for the 13th general election, delegates fully supported the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) and Umno can be relied upon to provide a better future for the rakyat. If Najib wants to earn the respect of the rakyat, he should assume leadership and address the financial irregularities which have embroiled members of his Cabinet. The government website claims that the GTP would address “priorities that matter most to the rakyat”. With “1Malaysia” in mind, it is said to focus on “People First, Performance Now”. Family, Women, and Community Development Minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil defended her role in the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal, where RM250 million of taxpayers’ money was alleged to have been misappropriated by her husband and three children. Shahrizat’s denials and her cries of having “nothing to do with it”, will have cost Najib votes. Her arrogance has dented public confidence in Najib, despite the outward show of support by delegates. The rakyat has been told to tighten their belts. However, it is the taxpayer who has subsidised Shahrizat and her family’s luxurious lifestyle – the RM800,000 on overseas holidays, two luxury apartments costing RM14 million, a RM534,000 Mercedes and RM30,000 for her husband and son to perform the haj. Perhaps, at the end of this debacle, the taxpayer will have to bail her and the government out. Again. Najib and his ministers rallied around Shahrizat at the party conference. Despite his claim of a united front, his avoidance of the issue may precipitate his own downfall. The drip-drip exposures of large-scale corruption, involving Umno-BN politicians is like a dam with large cracks in it. “People First, Performance Now” has been replaced by “Cover-ups in corruption”. The irresponsible Shahrizat used the Wanita Umno platform to defend herself. She said, “I am being patient, as a woman I have to be calm… they (Pakatan Rakyat) are doing this because they are afraid of Wanita Umno’s strength.” This project is not Wanita Umno’s doing but had all the fingerprints of Shahrizat and her family’s greed. She even tried to drag the integrity of women, into this scandal.
Covering up the mess Shahrizat accused the opposition of scheming to undermine Umno. She forgot that it was the Auditor-General’s Report on the national audit which alerted us to the abuse of funds in the NFC. Senior politicians – from Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, and former premier, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, right down to Umno Youth leader, Khairy Jamaluddin – were prepared to sink into the mire, to cover up the mess. Even the police had a part in this drama. They claimed that there was no criminal breach of trust in the NFC scandal. Haven’t they jumped the gun by being investigator, judge and jury? Umno is in a bind. Shahrizat must be protected at all costs. Najib knows that if one minister were to fall, the other ministers would be at risk, too. His own position is precarious. Najib realises that his authority over the more recalcitrant Umno members, grows weaker by the day. However, as long as they stick together, their corrupt deeds need never be revealed. Najib knows that he cannot sacrifice anyone, just yet, because he has no control over them once they are out of his inner circle. At best, Najib can only hope that the whole thing will blow over. But it won’t. PAS vice-president Mahfuz Omar charged Umno with scaring the Malays into believing that the DAP would erase Malay rights. He said, “Don’t come to a point where we (Malays) become fearful of DAP, and then RM250 million disappears from National Feedlot Corporation. “Afraid of DAP, RM52 billion worth of Bumiputera shares shrinks to RM2 billion… afraid of DAP, RM1.8 billion given to (former MAS CEO) Tajuddin Ramli goes missing… afraid of DAP, RM32 billion vanishes from the Hardcore Poverty Development programme (PPRT).” In contrast, Ahmad Maslan, a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, warned delegates about the DAP. He said: “The Malay language will be lost, say goodbye to the Malay Sultans… say goodbye to Islam.” Ahmad also claimed that should the opposition triumph in the 13th geneal election, the DAP would “not respect the royal institution” and that these “agents of Christianisation” would result in “Malays losing power”. He painted a portrait of a country where the Chinese monopolised the country’s politics and economy. No jobs in kampungs A village elder, who was asked to comment about the developments in the general assembly, said, “Despite being in power for over 54 years, Umno made only a few Malays rich beyond their wildest deams. But not the majority. Look around you. Look at this village, or what is left of it. “This kampung was once a thriving community. Our smallholdings and agricultural produce sustained us. But it saw a decline in the past two decades. “Homes are abandoned, there are no jobs in the kampungs. The old moved to the towns and cities to be with their children. This is a ghost village. Even politicians stopped turning up before elections. “The leaders ripped up our communities. First, they took away our lands and gave concessions to the big companies. These big businesses expected us to be their cheap labourers. When we refused, they brought in the foreign workers. We are priced out of our own lands, our own heritage and our livelihood. “We continue to give Umno our support. Why, I wonder?” At the party conference, Najib claimed that the rakyat should entrust their future to Umno. Shahrizat said that the opposition was “jealous” of Umno. And Ahmad claimed DAP was racist while Muhyiddin said Umno was not. Despite the assurances of Najib and the Umno high command, the party appears troubled and insecure. Ahmad, the Umno information chief, referred to a “hung Parliament”. He sounds insecure and appears to lack confidence in his party. Perhaps, when things really slide and his own position becomes untenable, Najib may want to save his own skin and only then discard some of the old baggage.
Daim and Aziz: latest victims
Mystery illness strikes Anwar trial
A mystery illness struck the Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trial this month, causing key witnesses to suffer severe psychological problems that prevent them from testifying in court. According to a medical doctor who refused to be named, the medical term for the condition is “Trialtestiphobia” and causes sufferers to experience “an intense, consuming and persistent fear of appearing in court to testify at the Anwar Ibrahim trial”The first to suffer from the strange ailment was Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who successfully avoided making a court appearance last month. The latest to fall victim to the disease were Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin and Deputy Education Minister Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin, who this month applied to set aside subpoenas served on them to testify at the trial.”This phobic anxiety causes the victims physiological symptoms such as a rapid, pounding heartbeat, stomach disorders, nausea, diarrhea, frequent urination, choking feelings, flushing of the face, perspiration, tremulousness, and faintness,” the doctor explained. “They should avoid strenuous activities such as horse riding.”He added that sufferers are also unable to confront their fears and avoid the situation or object that causes the fear. They walk around in a daze, mumbling repeatedly “I am in no position to give any relevant or material evidence or personal knowledge of any person or persons planning to end the political career of Anwar Ibrahim.” |
2. Despite the efforts of the learned judges there are still huge backlogs of cases of all kinds, civil and criminal, which probably will never be heard, much less adjudged. This is because the hearings take such a long time that the parties to the cases would have forgotten the facts or they would have died. Rafizi Ramli welcomed the defamation suit filed by Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil against him today, saying it would help uncover more dirt on the scandal-hit National Feedlot Corporation (NFC). The PKR strategic director said he was “more than glad” to go to court as this would allow him to subpoena company documents which could buttress the party’s claims against Shahrizat and her family. PKR is already in possession of what it claims to be the NFC’s cash book — obtained through an anonymous whistleblower — which details every transaction made by the company via its primary account. “We are very certain we are fine because everything that we say is backed by facts and data from inside, which they have not denied,” Rafizi (picture) told The Malaysian Insider today. He noted that it was Shahrizat and not the NFC who had filed the suit, pointing out that the company could also dispute the allegations in court. The suit was likely a belated political move to assuage public suspicion about the NFC, Rafizi added, noting that the federal minister’s lack of reaction prior to this had lent credence to PKR’s claims. The matter will be handled by the party lawyers, Sivarasa Rasiah and N. Surendran. Shahrizat’s suit today comes following months of allegations by PKR that she had misused millions in federal funds earmarked for the NFC to pay for personal expenses incurred by her and her family. The cattle raising scheme is headed by the Wanita Umno chief’s husband, Datuk Mohamad Salleh Ismail, and their three children. The RM100 million suit also named Ampang MP Zuraida Kamaruddin, who heads the rival Wanita PKR wing. Zuraida could not be reach for comment. Shahrizat applied for three weeks’ leave from her duties last week after new allegations of bribery surfaced in the NFC project. Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced yesterday that the government would appoint an auditor to scrutinise NFC’s books in light of PKR’s accusations. Rafizi today urged the government to make the results and conclusions of the audit public by tabling them in Parliament.
3. And, as they say, “justice delayed is justice denied”.
4. The litigations by politicians may be justified. But politicians must accept that as politicians they would be bad-mouthed by their opponents. It is up to them to counter the allegations made. They should not always be suing in court. 5. For Muslims they should be willing to swear properly that there is no truth to the allegations. 6. Often the litigation is intended to shut the mouths of their opponents. In Malaysia when a case is being heard in a court, it becomes sub-judice and comments outside can constitute “contempt of court”. By suing the matter becomes sub-judice and the opponents’ mouths would be shut. Through repeated appeals the case can be prolonged and the defendants’ mouths would remain shut to the advantage of the litigant for years.
7. For the person sued, much money would have to be spent on lawyers. For years he would be assailed with anxiety that he might be found guilty and if he is unable to pay he may be bankrupted. 8. Yet when the defendant wins, the litigant may need to pay cost only, which the court will fix. Often the amount would be a minute fraction of the amount he is sued for. 9. Because the cost to the litigant is so very little, the tendency is to sue for millions. This is grossly unfair to the defendants. If the law is intended to promote justice then the litigant should also suffer from the same anxieties for the length of time of the hearing and if his allegation is baseless he should pay his victim the same amount he sued for. 10. Then there would be justice and frivolous cases would not be brought before the courts. The judges would then have time for their other cases. 11. Incidentally I was sued for 100 million Ringgit. When after almost five years I won, I was awarded cost at 70 thousand Ringgit, which of course go to my lawyers On Oct 20, 2009, the Court of Appeal threw out an appeal by Anwar because the memorandum of appeal was not in Bahasa Malaysia.Last year, the Federal Court had dismissed the point of law raised by Anwar’s lead counsel Karpal Singh in his leave application to appeal over his RM100mil defamation suit against Dr Mahathir. The point of law raised was whether the grounds of judgments which were written in English, are invalid. A plaintiff’s lawyer writes the judicial decision against a reporter in a defamation suit  In an astonishing display of the corruption of Malaysia’s legal system, a legal secretary testified Tuesday that a plaintiff’s lawyer in 1994 wrote an entire judgment to be read by a presiding judge who awarded RM10 million in defamation damages to a crony of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad against a journalist and six other defendants.The story revolves around V K Lingam, one of Malaysia’s best-connected lawyers, who in September 2006 became the star player in a continuing legal scandal when a videotape was made public of a telephone conversation he was having with Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim, then the country’s third-ranking judge, who was in charge of the appointment of most senior judges. The videotape appeared to show that some of Mahathir’s closest associates, particularly gaming tycoon Vincent Tan, were involved in the appointments of politically malleable judges. Tuesday, a royal commission appointed to probe the allegations was told by G. Jayanthi, then a legal secretary to Lingam, that Lingam had written the judgment for the controversial case, in which Vincent Tan was awarded MR10 million in damages over four articles written about him in the now-defunct Malaysian Industry magazine. The judgment was transferred to a computer disk and delivered to High Court Judge Mokhtar Sidin, who read it in court. In the offending articles, Pillai, who faced RM2 million in damages, wrote that Tan was using his own newspaper to favor his business interests. The hearing was adjourned yesterday until Friday to hear applications to disqualify commissioners Mahadev Shankar and Khoo Kay Kim. Mokhtar presided over the 1994 defamation case, in which Tan was also awarded legal fees and 8 percent annual interest on the total damages until they were fully paid. Pillai has since died. In 2000, he told theInternational Herald Tribune, “In my 40 years as a journalist I have not earned 2 million ringgit. They are welcome to take the money I don’t have.” The record damages set a standard for subsequent defamation cases, in which Malaysian business and political figures have used libel suits as a bludgeon to limit critical reporting.
It is not the first time the charge has been made against Lingam. Raphael Pura, a correspondent for the Asian Wall Street Journal who himself was sued by Lingam, made the same charge in 1999, alleging that the judgment, by Mokhtar, “written in part by the plaintiff’s counsel, Datuk V.K. Lingam” was typed by “Lingam’s secretaries one Jayanthi and Sumanthi.” The leader of the panel looking into the charges against Lingam is Haidar Mohd Noor, a former chief judge. Haidar ruled in 2000 against allowing Pura’s allegations against Lingam into evidence. In the current series of events, he allowed Jayanthi’s testimony to be admitted into the record. That has raised suspicions that the commission is actually allowing into evidence mostly information that would reflect badly on former Prime Minister Mahathir. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who made the original videotape public in September, charged in a press conference in Hong Kong Wednesday that the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is seeking to neutralize Mahathir in advance of elections which have been called for March 13. Mahaathir has called for Abdullah Badawi to step down as prime minister to be replaced by Najib Tun Razak. “I don’t think anyone seriously expects anything to happen in this commission,” Anwar said. “I only think it is meant to put Dr Mahathir in check.” Certainly prior to the current round of hearings, the tendency in Malaysia’s government-controlled press has been to play down allegations of wrongdoing in the judiciary. The panel itself is regarded as having little power and little inclination to use what it does have. Despite repeated requests to testify, Anwar has been ignored. At one point, the panel threatened to arrest Anwar if he didn’t come up with the name of the anonymous person who had videotaped the conversation between Lingam and Ahmad Fairuz. Jayanthi, 45, also testified to the commission Tuesday that she had been given money by Lingam to deliver to other judges. In the case involving Pillai, she said that at some time between November and early December 1994, she and two other secretaries had been asked to do some “confidential typing,” which turned out to be the judgment in Tan’s favor. “I soon discovered that this (confidential typing) was about preparing and typing the judgment in relation to civil suit number S5-23-23-94 between Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun vs Hassan Hamzah, Soh Eng Lim, MGG Pillai and four others,” Jayanti testified in a written statement. “Datuk Lingam was dictating from some handwritten notes the draft judgment for Sumanti to type. “Every now and then, he would order me to get various reported cases in the library to be incorporated in the judgment. He completed dictating the full judgment at about 3am.” In 2000, the case took on additional controversy when the appeal by Pillai was denied by a three-judge Supreme Court panel headed by then-chief justice Eusoff Chin after Chin came under public scrutiny for spending part of his overseas vacation in New Zealand with V K Lingam after he had argued the case. Lingam later denied allegations that the New Zealand holiday had been paid for by Lingam, and that they had merely met on the flight. Nonetheless, in 2000, Eusoff was criticized by a government minister charged with legal affairs for behavior “”not in keeping with the proper behavior of a judicial personality.” In her statement, most of which was written, Jayanthi said that that Lingam was assisted by his brother, another lawyer and the former head of Malaysia’s Industrial Court. She told the court that she had given her handwritten corrections of the draft judgment along with the judgment itself to her lawyer, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah. Jayanthi worked with Lingam for 13 months before resigning, she said, after being accused of stealing 1 million of Lingam’s shares in Berjaya Group. Although the shares were later found and she was asked to come back, she refused, she told the panel. Lingam, she said, “corrected the draft judgment in red ink on certain pages. Sumanti then did the corrections accordingly and made a copy of the draft judgment in a floppy disk which was to be given by Datuk Lingam to Justice Datuk Mokhtar Sidin. I later discovered that the judgment as was written by Lingam was fully incorporated as the official judgment of the said judge.” The charges by Jayanthi are the latest in a series of commission hearings that at times have threatened to envelop the entire judiciary in allegations of deceit, corruption and factionalism, with the would-be reformers of the Malaysian Bar Association coming under fire as well for asking Lingam for help in securing appointments. Lingam at one point accused Robert Lazar, a lawyer representing the Malaysia Bar Council, of seeking Lingam’s help to become an appellate court judge, bypassing the lower courts. Lazar denied the charge. In one tape made public by the commission, Dzaiddin Abdullah, who served as chief justice between 2000 and 2003, was implicated for accepting gifts and payments from Lingam. In addition, as an example of the factionalism in the court, Dzaiddin was asked to explain yet another videotape, in which Lingam claimed that he hated his predecessor, Eusoff Chin, and that Chin had blocked his chances to become a candidate for state honors. | 
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