“I am sorry too” the great ‘dawsheng’ has spoken!

The Lingam Tape captures not only the mood of this once honorable profession, but the depth to which it has sunk over the last twenty years or more.

The reason why many lawyers stayed away from the so-called March for Justice is apparent for all to see! They were afraid of being black listed by the government and the government not only owns and controls banks with interests in property development but have themselves gone into property development. Further, the big and medium size law firms are dependent on the government for their business, and lawyers working in them are not free to do so because of the conflict of interest involved.

I’m sorry but I find it hard to see the difference between the whores who ply their trade along Bukit Bintang and lawyers in Malaysia.

That only 2,000 out of the 15,000 lawyers walked for Justice is of course no inference that the remaining 13,000 condone judicial fixing or do not support call for justice or an independent judiciary, whatever may be said of their outrage not being sufficiently strong to translate into the walk. But perhaps they contribute to the Cause in ways other than a dramatic march to the Palace of Justice. The older and retired ones like Lim Kean Chye – too old to walk – came out, for example, in the law conference to blast half past six judges!

The description “no longer an honorable profession” is more apt in reference to rampant undercutting of professional fees and discounts due to keen competition which the big time lawyers hypocritically condemn but they themselves practise to survive.

As in other professions, there are black sheep that abscond with clients money and engage in fraudulent behaviour but they are, overall – and so far – still a very small percentage of the entire Malaysian Bar, there being many more Ok than otherwise.

In terms of defending the Rule of Law, the record of the Malaysian Bar is, I would think, quite OK.

In 1988 judiciary crisis the Bar passed a resolution against then CJ Hamid that is still unrescinded.

In response to Lingam Video Clip the Bar Council called for restoration of Judiciary Independence and the establishment of Royal Commission. Participants of the recently held law conference organized by the Bar Council took De facto law minister to task on this issue.

In any public controversy relating to issues of public interest relating to administration of Justice, the Bar Council has issued statements taking positions in favour of Rule of Law and rights of citizenry.

It is agreed that the lawyers have no record yet of behaving like their Pakistani counterparts to take to the streets during Musharaff’s emergency rule, clashing with police and facing arrests – not yet anyway.

Well, only 2,000 out of the 15,000 lawyers think justice has been perverted. I wonder if the Bar Council really represents all the lawyers, can the President come out and make clear whether or not Lingam is still a member? Anyway, who needs to be a member of the Bar Council when you can fix the appointment of the top judge? How silly of me….

Maybe the 3-man No Power Panel reports were too loaded with legal jargon for the PM to decipher. After all there were too legal guys in the panel.

So now the 3 mininsters read the 3 reports and come up with a bullet-points summary.

That says it all! A 3-man, a 6-man or a 10-man Ministerial Committee (underline “ministerial”) – what does it matter?? It is a pervesion of the law of natural justice.

The wild speculative guess is simply this – the Haidar panel is holding the ruling party at ransom for more money to come up with no RCI recommendation. In the mean time, they leaked the content of the report to SinChew and a few other papers for good measure. This should really put the pressure on PM and ruling party to pay the bigger ransom money. If the ransom money is paid, then, the report can be changed over the weekend and noone will be none the wiser, since the report is kept secret and not revealed to the public. Further, only the 3 senior ministers who are aligned with the ruling party has seen it, whilst the opposition ministers have not.

Pretty convenient isn’t it NOT to reveal the report to the public immediately? And pretty convenient isn’t it for the report to be first reviewed by 3 “senior ministers” when all 3 are aligned to the ruling party?

Of course, I don’t know what will happen for sure this weekend. But doing it this way invites a lot of speculative / conspiracy theories. And when we have so little trust of the ruling party, this is not the right way to handle the situation. Bottom line = this sort of decisions (secrecy, biased sub-committee) are simply not transparent at all.

Old Observer.

Simply contrary to the best principles of public accounatbility.

Secondly, why should there be another three-man Ministerial Committee to study the Report of the three-man Haider Panel on the Lingam Tape?

Simply contrary to the best practices of transparency.

Thirdly, a 3-man Ministerial committe: Nazri is singularly incredible (need I repeat the litany of his stupidity!); Rais is obsequiously obeisant to the system (and shame on him – it’s the proverbial prostitution of principles before power!); Radzi – to be fair, I know too little of this man to comment. But since Radzi has been around for so long with so little impact (EXCEPTION: his handling of the foreign manpower issue sucks!), what good is there to have someone who makes so little difference to Malaysian society.

Simply pointless.

Now the point I am trying to make – cut out the sham and the shenanigans & simply come out with the truth! No one needs to lie, distort, camuflage or white-wash the truth. Let the Royal Commission of Inquiry do their job. Why stand in the way of a fact-finding, quasi-judicial committe intent on establishing whether there has been perversion of justice and corruption of public office.

Any ‘roadblock’ must be dealt with the greatest contempt that it deserves.

First, they go into the denial mode to try and deflect public interest. Then when clearly this is failing, in an attempt to try to appease the Malaysian public and under pressure to do something they formed a panel without giving those sitting on the panel the tools to work on.

Now they formed yet another committee of senior Ministers to try and decide whether further action is needed. This is an insult to our intelligence! It is like making the robber act as judge to try to decide if there was a robbery.

OJ Simpson would be happy to oblige.

Limkaput does not know.

What do you think? A battery of 36 Ministers in a nation of 25 million people.

Even Australia does not have the same number of Ministers. But then, one wit actually said that the political health of a country actually can be seen from the number of Ministers it has.

So, go figure that one out.

Of course, the MCA and MIC Ministers are not appointed because we know all along that they are nothing but window-dressing to reinforce Umno’s empty claim of sharing power.

How we can reinforce something empty is truly Malaysian! It has nothing to do with our current drive for tourists. That slogan is Truly Asia!

They are half-past six, and you are asking them to prove that they are not. Something is amiss here.

Ha, ha, now we expect to see the real decision from our three senior ministers.

Anyone ready to bet the outcome?

We must salute our PM for entertaining us with first class wayang kulit.