Although the Cabinet last week decided on the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Tape scandal, and it is to decide on its terms of reference on Wednesday, I am very concerned that there had been no consultation process whatsoever on its terms of reference and composition in the past five days.
This is a matter of grave concern as all indications point to a very restricted terms of reference which is going to spark a new outcry, as Ministers are still in thick denial of the need for far-reaching judicial reforms to check the rot in the past two decades to restore national and international confidence in the independence and integrity of the judiciary.
This could be fathomed from the statements of two of the three Ministers who had been appointed to study the Haider Report on the authenticity of the Lingam Tape.
Home Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad gave very clear indication that the terms of reference will be a very restricted one when he said that the royal commission would have the power to call anyone to assist in its inquiry.
He said:
“In this case, the lawyer seen in the video clip is the primary suspect. “Once the royal commission is established, and based on its governing enactment and instruments, it has the power to call anyone as a witness.” He added: “The royal commission can summon anyone it wants — the person who recorded the video, the actor, or the people mentioned in the clip.”
Was Radzi signifying that the terms of reference of the Royal Commission will be tightly limited to the Lingam Tape events rather than the fundamental question of the rot in the judiciary because of the prolonged and protracted crisis of confidence in the independence and integrity of the judiciary which had lasted some two decades.
From Radzi’s statement, there are legitimate grounds of concern as to whether the major series of crisis of confidence in the independence and integrity of the judiciary, starting with the “mother” of judicial crisis in Malaysia — the sacking of former Lord President Tun Salleh Abas and two Supreme Court judges Datuk George Seah and the late Tan Sri Wan Suleiman Pawanteh — would be completely out-of-bounds for the Royal Commission of Inquiry unless and until they had been explicitly featured in the Lingam Tape?
Such concern have been reinforced by the public stand of the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz that there is no need for judicial reforms.
Such official attitude was best reflected in the “On The Beat” column of Star’s Wong Chun Wei, “Let the royal panel do its job”, who said he agreed with Nazri that “there is not much wrong with our institutions, except that wrong decisions have been made”.
Wong did not realize that he is caught in a maze of contradiction, as he had earlier admitted that “No one will argue that the judiciary needs an overhaul because its credibility has taken a bashing”, that “the rot” began when Tun Salleh Abas was sacked as Lord President in 1988 following moves to subjugate the judiciary and that politicians who did not know about the rot in the judiciary “must be hypocritical or living on another planet”.
Yet even Wong was not prepared to support a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Tape with the additional mandate to make recommendations for judicial reforms to ensure that such rot in the judiciary spanning two decades cannot happen again because of institutional defects in the system.
I call on the Prime Minister and Cabinet on Wednesday not to be so pusillanimous and lacking in vision as to miss the golden opportunity to put right what had been wrong and rotten with the system of justice for nearly two decades by giving the widest and most comprehensive terms of reference to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Tape with the additional mandate to restore national and international confidence in the independence and integrity of the judiciary.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Lingam Tape should be empowered not only to investigate into every aspect of the issues featured in it, but also all aspects affecting the independence and integrity of the judiciary in the past two decades, starting with the 1988 judicial crisis, the 33-page anonymous letter of former High Court judge, Syed Ahmad Idid Syed Abdullah in 1996 containing 110 allegations of corruption, abuses of power and other improprieties against 10 named judges, as well as the revelations of “corruption” of judges resurfaced by V. Thirunama Karasu, younger brother of lawyer Datuk V.K. Lingam through a media conference by former MP Wee Choo Keong yesterday.