However, the immensity of truth eluded him when the King took exception to his views and sided with the Executive. The rest is history, unpalatable and a national shame.
Musa Bin Ismail
Now that Yang Berbahagia Senator Datuk Zaid Ibrahim has finally picked up the Government's courage to face the music for the hard melancholic truth and opening a sincere way for unreserved apology to Yang Berbahagia Tun Salleh Abas and the other two sacked judges, it is pertinent to recount the fateful tales of the judicial mayhem from out of the blinding mist.
When Tun Salleh Abas took his solemn oath to become the Lord President he knew justice was synonymous to his seat of office and uncompromisingly took to heart that come what may justice would be entrenched in the land without fear or favour.
Indeed he did so magnificently. When justice was on the brink of ruin he stood fearlessly to defend it. However, the immensity of truth eluded him when the King took exception to his views and sided with the Executive. The rest is history, unpalatable and a national shame.
Unceremoniously thrown out of the highest office in the land by the Tribunal (dubbed the kangaroo – court) Tun Salleh Abas, far from being crestfallen, did not fade into the abyss of oblivion. On the contrary he has arisen from the ashes of injustice crusading for redemption. Ever since, the injustice of the case keeps rattling the legal minds and knocking at the door of the Executive. The case never settles so as its restless dust.
The people's power and the blindfolded Lady of Justice with the scales of justice in hand keep haunting the legal profession and our "wounded" judicial system. The Bar was chafed. But the Hadhari Government for reasons known best to it continue to keep the lid of the rattling box of justice closed.
The persistent question, in sad wonder, is - for how long could justice could be denied? Justice like truth is a soaring warrior, invincible and an elusive force. It could not be kept under heavy chain, it will certainly find its seat of honour and its rightful dignified abode no matter how strong human hands try to subdue or thwart it or stand in its way. And justice being justice, it will not transfix or crucify an innocent man and neither will it share any common ideal with perpetrators of injustice or anyone with a dirty hand.
The public's furore saw the Executive's adamant frigid stance against reopening of Tun Salleh Abas' matter. The Executive reasoned out that unless new facts emerged to merit a review the matter will not be reconsidered.
To the Hadhari Government the matter is conclusive, closed and "buried" and could not be "exhumed" on the grounds of finality of a case. How astounding! This is not an issue of the Executive's discretion or power but a peek at justice from hindsight which in this instance ought to be available to Tun Salleh Abas based on the dire circumstances of the case and justice demands that the matter be reopened for the lone interest of justice not the Executive.
If, it is argued, that in the quest for justice one has to seek the "pleasure" of the Executive then in the realm of jurisprudence the Executive is but an authoritarian body thriving on passion over reason. This phenomenon could not co-exist in a democratic system which we proudly claimed to be.
If finality of a case is a ground of refusal for review then the Executive is miserably trapped in its own web of defence like being tossed in a violent whirlpool. Tun Salleh Abas' case is not within the regular court's parameters and its rules of evidence. He is not charged under the Penal Code.
Tun Salleh Abas is referred to a Tribunal which holds more dearly to the lofty principles of equity and fairness beyond the stretches of the regular laws, a realm under protégé of Natural Justice. How could this case become final when the Tribunal itself is not constituted in accordance with the principles of fairness.
How could Tun Hamid sit in judgment when he stands to gain the seat of power of the man he tries, no matter how much Tun Hamid reminded himself of the cherished principle of Natural Justice and the perilous need to be objective. On this fact alone the entire proceedings is stinking high.
The question here is not that of being objective or being biased. The heart of the case and the inescapable obsession here is "appearing to be biased". As long as there appears to be bias in the minds of the public of the composition of the Tribunal or its proceedings, justice quickly vanishes to the vault of heaven. In such a situation the ensuing trial or hearing is to use a lay term "simply unfair, unnatural and without fairplay".
Here it is plain that Tun Hamid stands to gain if Tun Salleh Abas is ousted. It does not matter whether Tun Hamid gets the coveted office or not thereafter. However the dreaded fact is – he was indeed elevated to the highest seat left behind by the man he tried. To any lawyer with an ounce of brain this is all too embarrassing given the appearance of bias and the probable interest of promotion to Tun Hamid to the apex position, unless Tun Hamid has no interest to the position. Could that be so?
Further the selection of the quorum of the Tribunal is much to be desired. Again it appeared to be tainted. There were retired senior judges who could be the likely candidates but were conveniently overlooked, perhaps because of their fame for impartiality and passion for justice, I suppose. In the mind of the ordinary man the impartiality of these retired judges is more assured for they are uninterested parties – they are not in the running for the position of the Lord President.
Bias or not, it is pertinent to look at the facts which unfolded prior to the setting up of the infamous Tribunal. It is open knowledge that the entire episode arose from the Executive's unhappiness or perhaps ire over certain Court decisions including one which tore apart UMNO into a non-entity. UMNO was declared illegal and suffered a tumultuous demise. It appears too that the then premier took it upon himself that the Courts were standing in his way in his overzealous stride to superbuild the country's economy into a developed state by 2020.
Like removing the immunity of the Sultans the head of the Executive engineered a heavy assault on the Judiciary. The Executive continued to plunder the Courts of its sword of justice. As chivalrous head of the institution of justice, Tun Salleh Abas swiftly sought the shelter of His Majesty's umbrella for which he was held blameworthy and which subsequently, under the craft of the Executive, paved the way to the setting up of the dishonourable Tribunal for his removal.
It marks the unheralded event in the glorious history of the judicial system that the Executive had in its darkest hour blemished and smashed the country's coveted concept of the separation of power by damning and ripping apart its own judicial system beyond the wildest imagination of any prudent statesman.
The Executive succeeded as it had metamorphosed into the most powerful organ of the Government ever since the then premier stepped into the seat of power. Baring its gleaming vengeful fangs, the Executive delivered its most potent bites on the Judiciary believing erroneously that it had the popular mandate and blessing from the people and emboldened by it the Executive arrogantly felt that it had all the power "to do anything" it thinks fit.
The blow was however resisted. Trained by Tun Salleh Abas himself, his subordinate brother judges stood valiantly against the Executive onslaught and faced fearlessly the executive blow leading to the expulsion of two other celebrated and respected judges.
The fact that the then premier pushed down Tun Salleh Abas's throat the ultimatum of resignation or face the Tribunal is unsustainable. This is another point of disrepute, smearing the proceedings. Coupled with the then premier 's rabid wrath against the Judiciary the evidence of mala fide of the Executive is overwhelming. The elephant could no longer be hidden under the carpet. But strangely the Tribunal's eyes were not sharp enough to see the elephant, not even the apparition thereof. How astonishing!
With all these facts in full crescendo, easily accessible and proven it is unimaginable that "a verdict of guilty" could be handed down against Tun Salleh Abas. Plain justice warrants that the case against Tun Salleh Abas be thrown out of the windows. The fact that it is not, has made it more irresistible to whisper in the mind that it is plausible that the Executive could have through its unseen hands "persuaded" the finding of the Tribunal as it did as history bitterly saw it and recorded it in its pages for the future generation to learn therefrom of our wicked wisdom.
As for Tun Salleh Abas justice continues to smile brilliantly on him. To the Bar, his name will go down in our nation's judicial history as an illustrious man who humbly but firmly sought justice courageously, not for himself alone but for the the nation's judicial system which has worked well ever since independence.
To the bindfolded Lady of Justice, Tun Salleh Abas is seen as a true son of justice and as a legal luminary who believes that justice ought to be jealously guarded and defended at all cost even by sacrificing his own life, even that, to this man from Terengganu, it is still a small sacrificial lamb to the altar of justice.
To the nation, the entire mayhem has led to the relinquishment of faith in the entire judicial system which sadly, like the city Rome, was not built in one single day but over a hard long years of perspiration and aspiration of so many faithful sons of the soil but this long hard-earned nurtured faith crumbled miserably under the lethal blows from the unrelenting Executive's aggressive powers.
In reflection, the entire episode is a pathetic tale of human passion and flaws – of how man, with virtual unfettered power, could pursue an act which causes such immeasurable devastation to the edifice of justice which act reverberates over time and in human conscience and leaves behind stains that could never be washed off in the annal of human history in the pursuit of human wisdom, decency, respectability and the virtuous life and most of all human justice.
To pontificate, every mortal needs to be guided in life by the Almighty, good morality and wisdom. Great men do not push their minds and ways to the exclusion of other views. Such idiosyncracy is destructive to oneself and to the community. Remember Pharaoh, Napolean, Hitler to name an infamous few. And these leaders who claim invincibility often perished by the power of their own design. All succumbed pathetically, dejected and forlorn. Even the dreaded mythical snake-haired serpentine, Medusa, perished and paralysed into stone by the reflection of her own rays of death. -- http://englishsection.com
No comments:
Post a Comment