Archive for October 4th, 2007
Lingam Tape – Haidar, Mahadev, Lam Thye should return inquiry panel appointment letters to Najib “for the sake of Malaysia”
The three-man Haidar Inquiry into the authenticity of the Lingam Tape yesterday asked the person who recorded it and others who have relevant information to come forward “for the sake of Malaysia”.
Panel member and former Court of Appeal judge said: “Somebody out there (has) the original video. Does he have the responsibility (to come forward)? There may have been others who were there (during the incident). Have they got the responsibility?
“If you don’t come, don’t complain, because at the end of the day, our report is based on the material made available to us.”
It is the three panel members Tan Sri Haidar Mohamad Noor, Datuk Mahadev Shanker and Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye who should set the example of acting “For the sake of Malaysia” by returning their letters of appointment to the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to ask for the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Tape, the allegations of the perversion of the course of justice concerning the fixing of judicial appointments and the fixing of court judgments as well as into the 19-year rot in the judiciary.
With the declaration of five “No”s — no power to administer oaths, no power to compel witnesses to come forward, no power to commit anybody for contempt, no immunity under the law and no power to protect witnesses, the Haidar panel is swiftly degenerating from a farce into a joke.
It is balderdash to plead “The truth is the best armour, justice is the best protection” or to trot out philosophical arguments about “the power of the powerless” as counterpoint to the absence of protection for witnesses who appear before the panel.
If all the judges at all levels of the judiciary in the past 19 years had been guided by the noble objective “For the sake of Malaysia” and the principle that “the truth is the best armour, justice is the best protection”, the system of justice and national and international credibility in the independence, integrity and meritocracy of the judiciary would not have plunged to such a sorry state with one judicial crisis after another in the past 19 years.
What happened to a courageous judge, Justice Syed Ahmad Idid Syed Abdullah who in 1996 tried the blow the whistle in his 33-page anonymous letter containing 112 allegations of corruption, abuses of power and misconduct against 12 judges? Read the rest of this entry »
The Medical CTOs
by ZK
Criminalization of doctors under Chua Soi Lek and Ismail Merican even after the PHFSA (Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Act) appears unabated. The Malaysian Medical Council, without prior notice, recently instituted its own form of CTOS, the database company that displayed financial data publicly without updating them. The MMC is now making available to the public particulars of all doctors in Malaysia including complaints hurled at them – PROVEN OR NOT. Running down people and establishments is now a favorite Malaysian past-time but the MMC appear to have further refined this into a fine art form. This new CTOS (Complaints Tip Off Service) is yet another example of the convoluted thinking that exists in this Ministry.
The website itself appears rather slow and unstable but what is more alarming is it appears out of date. A recent prominent case is listed as still being processed and government doctors who have had complaints against them including the pediatrician responsible for the loss of the little baby’s arm at Klang are not listed. More disturbing is, complaints against MMC Council members given prominence in our local newspapers and complaints against MMC secretariat members are mysteriously excluded. If this sort of selective persecution and non–updating of this database is going to exist, why implement it in the first place? It will just create another CTOS furore. An ambition for first world infrastructure matched only by a third world mentality is always a recipe for disaster which has been proven time and again in Malaysia.
Now who could have been responsible for this and did the Minister know about this new implementation? The Malaysian Medical Council appears to be broadly divisioned into Council members and a general secretariat which instead of being neutral is mainly comprised of seconded MOH staff. The Council itself has only 9 members from the private sector out of 21, the rest being from the government sector. Read the rest of this entry »
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