“Nazri should not act as Super-ACA and Super-AG to override both. If Johari is to be declared innocent of the RM5.5 million corruption allegations, it must come from the ACA and AG and not Nazri.” Kit

Although apparently he was only making his personal opinion known to all, it is highly improper – and what’s more, he knows it.

This is why I feel that although we have managed to set up the institutions and the infrastructure needed for democracy to work we do not have the tradition and the values to fall back on when it doesn’t. We have a Parliament consisting of the lower and upper chambers and we take pride in announcing to the world that ours is the Westminster model of Parliamentary Democracy as if to purge ourselves of values undemocratic but after some five decades we still have not got it. We have self-serving representatives who call themselves parliamentarians thumping their fists to drown any attempt at debate on the issues before the House, hurling derogatory remarks, racial slurs as if to remind the Opposition that they lost the elections and as losers they have no legitimacy to share the same room and breathe the same air as the victors – nor do they deserve respect that only the victors deserve. This is not what democracy is all about – and they know it. We are fools for thinking they don’t.

It is not up to the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department to tell us if one of their own has been guilty of anything. If the case is before a judge, comments like that would make the Minister liable for contempt. If there is such a thing as contempt of the AG, he would be the perfect candidate.

It is time Malaysians of whatever political affiliations wake up and learn the meaning of “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” before it is too late.

In a presidential system like that of the United States, with three branches of government and through the use of checks and balances a branch of government is prevented from usurping the functions of the other. In Malaysia we have the necessary political and social structures as preconditions to democracy in place so a government of the people, by the people and for the people could work – but we do not have the will nor the wherewithal to make it work. We have a person highly qualified and trained in the application of the law to play the role of chief prosecutor for the government in the person we proudly refer to as the Attorney General. But is it surprising that in a country where the ruling political party and the government are looked upon as being the same when they are really separate, when the latter is supposed to be neutral, that the AG who holds office at the pleasure of the Prime Minister also holds it at his displeasure if he does not do what he is expected to do. And so he replaces the head of the team of lawyers originally given the unenviable task of prosecuting a power broker for the government (read: Minister) for an alleged capital crime.

Malaysia is a country where judges are not scared of dispensing justice only when justice is interpreted to mean furtherance of the vested interests of individuals within the ruling party. It is not even the interest of the ruling party!

Separation of powers?? Naaah… that is a term worthy of debate in a classroom full of wannabe political scientists in the country’s tertiary institutions.

“If Johari is to be declared innocent of the RM5.5 million corruption allegations, it must come from the ACA and AG and not Nazri.” Kit

Correction.

Only the court can declare anyone innocent – more accurately ‘not guilty’ of the crime he is charged with (not necessarily innocent). The role of the ACA is to investigate and to forward the result of that investigation to the AG, and the AG’s role is to find if there is enough evidence to charge him with – not just bits of evidence but enough to make up what lawyers refer to as ‘prima facie’ evidence.