You Can Assault A Deputy Prime Minister But Never Steal A Bra

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

A fellow is jailed three years for stealing a bra from a supermarket.  A
lawyer is jailed six months for not renewing his practicing certificate
on time.  Another is jailed three months for filing an affidavit which
threatened to scandalize the court.  A third is jailed six months for
comments he made as a litigant.  One man gets six months for killing his
wife by driving a car over her.  But it is 24 years -- in four
concurrent terms of six years -- for one who exceeded his authority in
asking the police which had cleared his name to get a retraction from
those who had accused him of sodomy and adultery.  One journalist is
jailed three months for writing about a case involving the son of a
Court of Appeal judge without identifying himself as the husband of the
vice principal of the school.  A defamation case took barely six months
to complete but the Federal Court more than two years after hearing the
appeal to not deliver judgement, with no immediate prospect in sight.
One lawyer writes the judgement in a high profile case in which he
represents the plaintiff.  In that case, the court conveniently hands
him half the RM20 million he demanded in defamations, without any proof
of loss.  Judges are warned to deliver judgements in six months, but the
Court of Appeal judge who delivered this homily is soon to be in
contempt of his own prescription.  The Chief Justice, as head of a coram
in one case, already is, delaying judgement for more than two years.

     This disturbing judicial trend of seeming selective vindictiveness
against defendants, the special favours given to one particular lawyer
who boasts of going on holidays with the Chief Justice and the
Attorney-General and their families on holidays, the demand that the
Prime Minister would only appear as a witness in a case he had earlier
agreed to after he is told why his evidence is important, the Bar
Council ordered to pay nearly a million ringgit -- with more to come --
when an attempt to discipline this friend of the Chief Justice and
Attorney General successfully appealled all the way to the Federal
Court, to institute a trend which, with other pressures, turns the Bar
Council into a toothless mouse, puts the judiciary on a spotlight. 
Although the opposition has filed quite a few elections petitions, many
would withdraw for the penalty for not succeeding is heavy costs;  and
election petitions, as we all know, succeed almost always when it is the
National Front that files it.  The capriciousness with which the
judiciary seems to work, with the Chief Justice wanting to control
developments so that those he wants destroyed shall stay destroyed at
the Court of Appeal.  After M.G.G. Pillai got his leave to appeal from
the Federal Court, Tun Eusoff Chin decided he shall in future appear in
all leave applications.  Judges do not seem to be selected for their
competence but for their loyalty.

     It is this which frightens the citizen from appearing in the courts
to seek justice.  The more reflective judges worry about it endlessly. 
The judge in one case bluntly told the parties in a defamation case that
he would not allow Court of Appeal Judgement in the M.G.G. Pillai v
Vincent Tan libel case to be raised in a defamation case before him.  It
is widely believed, even among the judges, the Federal Court would
announce the judgement of the M.G.G. Pillai appeal after some defamation
cases -- principal plaintiff's lawyer, Dato' V.K. Lingam -- are settled
to the plaintiff's complete satisfaction.  That the judiciary's
independence has to be restated time and time again by the Chief
Justice, like an endless mantra, to convince us and them that what is
not is.  The judiciary, by and large, does a good job.  But because the
Chief Justice marks judges as being for him or against him, many
otherwise excellent judges swat flies while others are overloaded.  In
many a high profile need for judges, I have not been proved in who would
be appointed.  The judge who allowed a lawyer to write a judgement, now
in the Court of Appeal, is awaiting preferment to the Federal Court, the
stumbling block being the Conference of Rulers who, until the last
session, would not agree.  Ultimately, the judiciary must be responsible
for its own reputation.  But a drop of indigo discolours a cup of
vanilla, and so long as there are powerful indigo judges, this cannot
happen.  Until then, remember:  if you must commit a crime, never steal
a bra; instead go beat up the deputy prime minister to near death.  Tan
Sri Rahim Noor was so sure of this that he told his wife to prepare
goreng pisang (fried bananas) for evening tea on the day he he was
convicted for murderous assaulting He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. 

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my