— Lucius Goon The Malaysian Insider Feb 21, 2012
FEB 21 — The thing that troubled me most about the latest expose in Malaysia is the seemingly cozy relationship between the current Umno lawyer and the former chief justice, who incidentally is a former Umno lawyer.
I am beyond griping that the contract was not awarded through an open tender because open tender means competition and competition means level playing field — all the things that our friends like Ibrahim Ali, Mahathir Mohamad don’t like.
But it does disturb me that there appears to be a business nexus between an Umno lawyer Hafirizam Harun and Tun Zaki Azmi. In most developed countries, judges and especially chief justices keep an arms length from lawyers because they don’t want to be accused of bias or bringing the judiciary into disrepute. The more strict judges do not even socialise with lawyers.
So I can’t imagine the head of the Supreme Court of the USA or India or even the Chief Justice of Singapore getting a government contract or being involved in a business with a lawyer, especially one who acts for the government.
It just does not appear proper and throws up all kinds of permutations, not the least of which is the blurring of lines between the independence of the judiciary and the government.
If today there is a bunch of conspiracy theories on the Perak outcome and any other decisions which went the way of the government while Zaki was the CJ, the Najib administration have only themselves to blame.
Even by the recent bungling standards of the administration, this was a bad, bad one.