so,who is below the law?

you n i-lah,stupid!!!!

Dr Rojak takes the view that truth or otherwise of the declaration is immaterial for a plus will certainly cancel out a minus, well and truly. Yes, that is indeed so. In fact that was what najib and gang (I am being presumptive here) hoped to see. And more. It does not matter if the cancellation is complete. Whatever the net outcome of the cancellation may be, bala can not and must not be believed. For he cant be blowing hot and cold. Can he?

In the court of law, he would surely stand as an unreliable witness, would he not? This question is crucial. My kris is unsheated. Let me now give the question a good thrust. In law, the answers to such questions are never ever calculated mathematically. (Wheew!) Instead they are evaluated based on evidence and the circumstances of the case. This includes the demeanour of witnesses under x-exam. Lest, I be misunderstood, the same process applies across the board to the evaluation of all legal issues, and not just to the question on reliability.

Further, contradicting evidence do not automatically cancel each other out. A trial judge has the duty to exercise his judicial discretion to pick one over the other. And he must do so. Needless to say, he could reject them both but only after having evaluated the facts and circumstances, found them unrealiable or untrue.

In bala’s case, his explanations are important and relevant evidence which a trial judge would give great weight to. What he said of course would be subject to x-examination. He should expect nothing less than the most gruelling of x-examinations. And replies he gives, from the box and whilst on his feet, could well tell a different story. This is something I dont know and cannot predict. Hence it would be best if I do not speculate. But at a superficial level, though, I am minded to find his explanations believable. It therefore follows that would also be minded to find his declaration credible and his subsequent retraction invalid. It is only proper for me to point out that the presumption I made earlier on is a clear indication of my non-neutral stand on the matter.

I don’t know how I can make this any clearer: it doesn’t matter what each of us individually believe, what matters is what a court finds credible. My suspicion is a neutral court would reject Bala’s testimony on the grounds of (provable) unreliability, unless it can be proven that the second SD was made under duress. Remember that his SDs constitute evidence of his unreliability. Not only do must of us suspect that Malaysia’s courts may not be entirely neutral in a case such as this, but proving interference in the second SD, rather than proving the existence of many, many coincidental goings-on will be very difficult, it seems to me.

k1980 – not the Paris thing again! What makes you think the alleged photo was in Paris? Did you read my blog article about the Asia Sentinel photos? It seems a lot of people jumped to ‘Paris’ because of the subs:

http://blog.lolyco.com/sean/2009/03/12/where-in-the-world-was-altantuya/

Bala has made this whole episode public and the public is entitled to comment, query and criticise whatever his motives are. One question – Would he have resurfaced had ‘they’ not played him out on the promised RM5 million?

Please people, Bala was an ex-Special Branch, let’s not assume he is not bright neither are those around him dumb.

In this case, one must be a damn fool to throw out Bala’s ‘value as a witness’ just because he has made two conflicting SDs.

The events that followed his first SD – threats, deportation, bribery and more threats – will convince even a pea-brained that Bala can be trusted and he speaks the TRUTH.

Credibility is like virginity, only without the option of surgery to get it back. If someone asks you to “lie for a few minutes only” or “it’s only one lie”, you have to consider the long-term consequence of being a known liar.

Regardless of what we believe to be the truth, I would say Bala is now of very little danger to anyone, and in very little danger himself. He has been effectively neutralised, so far as legal action (the only kind anyone might fear) is concerned. He probably knows this. How old is he? if he’s under 40, 5 million is not a lot of money. Have you ever worked out how much money you’ll need to have a comfortable life for 50 more years? It’s a lot! If he’s staring down the barrel of a gun and considering a life ‘on the run’ 5 million is nothing. He claims to have spent half a million in the last couple of years, doesn’t he?

Perhaps I’m not singing quite in tune with the choir. While Bala may have some residual political and commercial value, he seems to me to have lost his value as a witness. Am I right or wrong?

Take Kota Siputih as an example. He should have told the election commision NOT to appeal. The fact of the matter is if the High Court says the state assembly did not behave well enough, then THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR APPEAL.. Its about setting a higher standard of behaviour and what he says is that if it does not help him or hurt him enough with spin-doctoring, he will let them continue in their bad behaviour…