Y&A has something to say about Lingam's...

And it's knot about Lingam's Curry House, along Paul Street, Furong. --YL Chong, Desi, knottyaSsusual:)


Weak reasons for dropping Lingam case

By John Lee

OCT 23 — The anti-climactic resolution of the V.K. Lingam saga has not been getting a great deal of press time, even in the alternative media. It’s not a particularly sexy issue anymore, and the quiet whimper with which the government has dismissed it is enough to lull one into a false sense of complacency. But make no mistake about it: this is one of the most disastrous things to have ever happened in our country — so disastrous that once you fully understand its implications, you cannot see things in the same way ever again.

There is quite a bit of background to the case, which is why it might be hard initially to appreciate its full ramifications. To make a long story short, former Chief Justice Tun Eusoff Chin and prominent lawyer V.K. Lingam were photographed holidaying together in New Zealand about 15 years ago. This is actually quite bad, because it is an accepted ethical rule that judges do not fraternise with lawyers who are acting in cases which the judges will hear — Lingam represented tycoon Vincent Tan in his suit against journalist M.G.G. Pillai, a case eventually heard by a Federal Court panel which Eusoff chaired.

Both Lingam and Eusoff knew that if this was true, this would be a serious breach of ethics, so they denied it all. They claimed they just happened to bump into each other in New Zealand, and were not at all acquainted, as Eusoff claimed: “I bumped into him there. As a Malaysian in a foreign country, I was happy to see a fellow countryman.” Of course, this turned out to be completely nonsense — Eusoff and Lingam booked tickets on the same flights to and from Singapore to New Zealand, as well as flights within New Zealand. They were behaving unethically and they knew it.

But without a smoking gun proving corruption or tampering with the process of justice, the tourism scandal died down. What revived it was a video of Lingam on the phone with then Chief Judge of Malaya Ahmad Fairuz Abdul Halim. The video showed promising Ahmad Fairuz that he could make him Chief Justice because he was in cahoots with Eusoff to fix the appointments of judges. Because of Lingam’s links with the Prime Minister and other Cabinet members instrumental in the judicial appointment process, he told Ahmad Fairuz that he could rest assured he would get the job — and, of course, he did.

So, in other words, the top judicial posts in our country were being sold and passed around like datukships or goreng pisang. Imagine if we elected our members of Parliament by getting men like Lingam to give them to their friends. Heck, imagine if we picked our Prime Minister and Cabinet in this manner — that’s exactly how we picked our top judges.

This is no joking matter, so even our government had no choice but to appoint a royal commission to probe the matter. The royal commission looked into evidence of corruption in the judicial system, especially the recordings of Lingam’s conversations with Eusoff. This was big news, if you can remember — and the royal commission’s findings were even bigger. If you need a refresher, the royal commission recommended that the authorities investigate former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Eusoff and Ahmad Fairuz, former Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, Vincent Tan, and Lingam for offences under the Sedition Act 1948, the Prevention of Corruption Act 1961, the Legal Profession Act 1976, the Official Secrets Act 1972 and the Penal Code.

To recap: there is strong evidence that two of the most powerful politicians in the country, two of the most powerful judges in the country, one of the richest men in the country, and one of the most prominent lawyers in the country violated some of the most strict laws of the land — the Sedition Act and the Official Secrets Act, among others! And their defence to all this was the shabbiest imaginable. Lingam variously claimed that he was not the man in the videotape, that he was drunk, or that he could talk whatever cock he liked in his own house. Whenever they faced a hard question during the royal commission grilling, both Eusoff and Dr Mahathir would insist they just couldn’t remember.

When the most powerful and intelligent Malaysians you can think of can’t even muster a mildly convincing defence to save their skins, you know something’s wrong. The Cabinet again had no choice but to approve the royal commission’s recommendations in investigating these six men for their potential crimes. And now, a year later, the Cabinet has quietly approved the dropping of all investigations, saying there’s just not enough proof.

You have the smoking gun — you have a top lawyer on the phone with a top judge, and they’re openly talking about how the whole government is rigged to ensure justice is done only for the highest bidder. You’d need an equally huge smoking gun to reject this evidence — and yet without any fanfare, the government has decided to drop the whole matter. Our administration of justice has been indicted of corruption to its very core, and the government can’t even care enough to explain what’s so compelling that they must drop the case. And people still wonder why I don’t believe in Barisan Nasional or 1Malaysia.

NOTE: John Lee is a third-year student of economics at Dartmouth College in the United States. He has been thinking aloud since 2005 at infernalramblings.com.