Datuk Syed Ahmad IdidMy main point is that one of the esteeemed BUM2008 Speakers is Datuk Syed Ahmad Idid, and one of my buddies, Capt Yusof Ahmad aka Ancient Mariner, who resides at http://cyusof.blogspot.com/ was the one responsible for lasso-ing this ex-Judge to speak on May 1, 2008 at the Lake View Club. "Thanks, Saudara Syed Ahmad, for accepting our humble Invite!:) " on behalf of BUM2008 Organising Committee. ~~ Desi
So if you want to hear it "from the horse's mouth", sign up now for BUM2008 by investing RM50 for a fun-D Do by the Lake -- described by some as the HAP Blogger's Event of the Year!
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From The Star:
Wednesday May 23, 2007
I’ll do it again, says ex-judge who blew whistle on corruption
By SHAILA KOSHY
KUALA LUMPUR: Former High Court judge Datuk Syed Ahmad Idid, who resigned after a 33-page letter on corruption in the judiciary was circulated 11 years ago, said yesterday he would “do it again, but differently.”
“But I want to clear something up: I did not distribute the letter to the public.
“I sent it to seven people and one of them must have printed copies and distributed them,” he said at a public lecture titled Addressing Corruption in Malaysia organised by the International Institute of Public Policy and Management at Universiti Malaya.
Syed Ahmad said this when asked whether he would do the same today if he were still a judge.
“I was trying to get the Government to realise there was a problem and the need to address it.”
“Life has been hard (since his resignation) but at least I’m still alive unlike in some other countries where informers are killed,” said Syed Ahmad, who made it public last year that he was the author of the letter.
In 1996, Syed Ahmad resigned and there was no prosecution.
Although he was never officially identified as the author, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, then Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, had told Parliament: “Everyone already knows that only one judge has resigned.”
Asked later at a press conference how he would do things differently since there are still no laws today to protect whistleblowers or for the public to have access to information that could substantiate allegations of corruption, particularly in light of the authorities maintaining that his allegations had been investigated and proven untrue, Syed Ahmad said: “If that’s what they say, I can’t say anything more. The government machinery is very strong.”
He commended Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the government’s campaign to combat corruption.
DESIDERATA: While the Government under Pak Lah had taken the first, but significant, steps towards making redress acknowledging wrongs had been done to former Lord President Tun Salleh Abas and five "brave ones" (as I term it in one of my own writes...), I hope logically, the same or similar redress is extended to Datuk Syed Ahmad Idid! Soon.
UPDATEd @12.44PM, after an interview with Sin Chew features writer Sdr SK CHIN on cloudy, not so sunny Saturdae,but just 24 from my Sundae Rumination, which is good for my soul; I don't care about yours, for it's truly each to his/her own.
I am a believer in Re-Cycling, here here cometh another piece spied at a Companion Essay to some funny Anthology of poems called Midnight Voiz in the plural, or sumthin', reprised wit' no authority, cos Desi is also a habitual stiller in the steal of the night!:(
When I was not yet convinced of the Cause of just deposed DPM Anwar Ibrahim and then his Reformasi movement was in its infancy, one Max Ehramann's disciple penned this shallow reflection:
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Dr. Mahathir’s 22-year as helmsman of Malaysia has also seen the country through many good, and bad, and ugly, times. The most tumultuous event would, in my humble opinion, be the “sacking of Anwar Ibrahim” as the deputy premier and as deputy president of UMNO, which was followed by a series of “strange events” in the courts, and in the streets of Kuala Lumpur. For me as a journalist, these events amounted to what I’d term as “rude awakenings”; but there was not much room for putting down in words one’s feelings of bewilderment and outrage at these events. Most just watched with a sense of resignation at the unfolding drama; many termed it as “sandiwara” (Malay opera), but these “shows” at least stirred many Malaysians from their life-goes-on-as-usual life-style. For once, many became more politically conscious, if not active, and they asked questions, if not in public, at least at the teh-tarik stall or higher class coffee-house, or at their favourite water-hole. People began to wonder what’s happening, and where are we, as a nation, headed? Featured here is one poem composed during these interesting times, relating to the then unfolding, mainly political, events:
It Gets Curiouser and Curiouser
When I was young I was told
Spinning a story you must be bold
But it still must have a beginning
And an ending, and somethin’ in between
But lately my motherland
Gave birth to very strange events
The cycle was like a record
Being played out from the end
Remember Michael Jackson’s video clip
When uprooted trees regained their standing stature
Dried up safari land became green pastures
And elephant carcasses stood majestically alive again
It gets curiouser and curiouser
As was observed in Alice in Wonderland
And events in Malaysia the past decade
Closely mirror Lewis Carroll’s rich imaginings
The story purportedly started in September 1998
As many Anwarists would want you to believe
That Reformasi was galvanized
When the deputy PM was excised from the head
But my friends, be reminded
It was way back on a May Day in ‘88
When the court sat on a holy day
A panel of junior judges sacked their chief
Salleh Abas Lord President was dismissed in a jiffy
But then DPM Anwar Ibrahim held his tongue
A decade later with one fell swoop
Anwar became a lauded victim in the vicious loop
Reformasi Anwar started, his loyalists proclaim
They forgot Salleh and his Brave Ones
Who stood their ground for justice
They indeed were the unheralded Originals
Reformation is not only taking to the streets
It’s changing of the mindset
What became of the Judiciary following Salleh?
It was downhill all the way…
It led the country’s leading judicious mind
The late Tun Suffian Hashim to lament in 2000:
“I wouldn’t like to be tried by today’s judges,
Especially if I am innocent.”*
*Quoted from a speech on March 10, 2000 that the former Lord President delivered at a Bar commemoration for the late Justice Tan Sri Wan Sulaiman.
One footnote I’d add here is that many Malaysians have short memories, including so called Anwar’s supporters who only cried “foul” when their leader was deemed to have been unfairly treated by the authorities, going through the motion of some court proceeding, followed by jail terms. But did they ever ask: when the judges were sacked about a decade earlier, and Anwar was part and parcel of the Government (first as Finance Minister, then as Deputy Prime Minister), did he raise any protest when “injustice” befell the former Lord President and five fellow judges? There is a saying, “What goes around, comes around”, which many of the country’s politicians must take heed of, if they do have a conscience.
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Sleep thee well, those "Brave Ones" who have departed. And to those still blessed to be with us still, have faith, God is Great. Belatedly, some justice is finally delivered. Salleh did say: "I am happy. I feel vindicated."
Bless Thee All,
Malaysians who stood tall
There are more
Quietly doing their duty
Because it's the right thing to do
Not because of national honours
Or that the Government would bestow
A Tan Sri, a Datukship
What's all these worth
If an Individual is robbed unjustly of his Dignity?
I:
S:
A: men
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