[Mahathir bising bila keputusan Hakim tidak menyebelahi kerajaan. Dia mempersalahkan hakim sedangkan ISU SEBENARnya ialah sikap dan kesalahan SPR yang telah mencemarkan demokrasi. SPR tidak berbuat APA-APA pun setelah sekian lama isu pengundi hantu diadu. Ia hanya bertindak baru-baru ini sahaja kerana termalu. Bukan SPR sahaja malah banyak jabatan kerajaan langsung tidak mahu melayan dan bekerjasama dengan mahkamah untuk menyelesaikan masalah kerana tidak mahu kerajaan nampak bersalah.

Kalaulah benar hakim sudah tidak bebas itu kerana kegagalan Mahathir sendiri kerana dialah yang mengsyorkan pelantikkan ketua hakim selama ini. Malah menteri yang menjaga hakim pun dilantik oleh dirinya sendiri. Mahathir sudah teraib maka dia cuba mengaibkan hakim pula. Tapi itu takkan kemana keputusan panjang lebar hakim Muhd Kamil mengandungi banyak fakta dan realiti betapa demokrasi sudah dibunuh di negara ini dengan agensi kerajaan sendiri TURUT TERBABIT bersekongkol dengan BN untuk tujuan yang amat jijik sekali.
- Editor]

http://www.malaysiakini.com/Column/2001/08/2001080101.php3

Wednesday August 1

Dobermans in the courts

CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

12:05pm, Wed: The Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, brooded two months after an election petition forced a re-election in the Likas state assembly constituency in Sabah; then he attacked, in a typical mendacious rendering of events, not as prime minister but as Barisan Nasional (BN) president, to accuse the judiciary of bias.

He admits, as The Star reports, irregularities in the electoral rolls, but since the Elections Commission (EC) certified them, it should not be questioned, as never in the past. But the Elections Commission, as the court found, did that by not investigating complaints about its veracity. It was not judicial bias but EC mendacity that forced the by-election.

Mahathir, it appears, is concerned about judicial independence only when in some way directly involved. He kept quiet when the judiciary went on a rampage not long ago under a different chief justice.

He thought nothing when the courtiers, cronies and siblings of the Establishment took the judiciary for a merry ride, with the then chief justice encouraging it, to make justice a synonym for injustice.

He kept quiet when his children sued for hundreds of millions of ringgit in defamation damages, with the local targets settling them and the foreign ones fighting it out in the courts. He did nothing when the judiciary ignored a World Court advisory it could not and put Malaysia on notice; nor when his Umno stalwarts, and businessmen close to him, sued for defamation, or threatened to, for astronomical sums.

More serious is the Prime Minister's implied admission that the judiciary is not independent. In other words, in his twenty years in office, he let the judiciary, once known for its independence and integrity, to become one where he himself doubts it.

It cannot be the Likas petition alone that bothers him. One swallow does not make a summer. His tirade against the judiciary is a failure of his own leadership. He wanted judicial Poodles and finds Alsatians and Dobermans instead.

Justice strait jacketed

The much vaunted judicial independence was modified such that whosoever took issue with the Prime Minister or his businessmen should expect short shrift, their lawyers threatened with jail and worse if they persist in representing them forcefully.

This changes with a new head, but that is not enough. The judiciary must be restored to what it was before Umno was declared illegal by the courts in 1988.

Mahathir says this act of Umno being declared illegal is proof of the judiciary's independence. No, it is proof the judiciary, with its inherent powers disappearing into thin air by constitutional fiat, could be bent to the Executive's needs from that point on.

That led to Tun Saleh Abas' dismissal from office; he had wanted a full bench of the then Supreme Court to hear the Umno appeal. Mahathir could not, at the time, allow it.

He wanted Umno declared illegal to remove his political opponents and control the Umno created from its ashes. As happened. Tun Hamid Omar, who succeeded the dismissed Tun Saleh, put the judiciary into the straitjacket it now struggles out of.

If the Prime Minister is serious about an independent judiciary, the inherent constitutional restrictions that hamper its independence must be removed. But would he want that?

Political shackles

An independent judiciary implies not a judiciary independent of the government, but which decides impartially in conscience that even the loser in a case is satisfied justice is done. The judges, almost always, in practice, tilt towards the government in evenly matched cases before them.

This cannot be legislated, nor by how many cabinet ministers it convicted or if it made the ruling party illegal.

That the prime minister harps on it 13 years after the event as proof of its independence raises questions about it. An independent judiciary must come from the collective conscience of the judiciary as an institution.

In the Likas petition, Mahathir ignored the judge's complaint that he was ordered by his superior to throw the petition out. A judiciary does not reform under a new chief justice. A new chief justice should reflect the conscience of a judiciary; not as a commander but as primus inter pares, first amongst equals; to lead by example, not by threats.

Malaysia is a long way from that. Judges here are glorified civil servants, clocking in and clocking out of office like an office boy. But a fresh wind is in the air.

They now tentatively throw off the metaphorical and political shackles to be at least the judges they were sworn to be. The Prime Minister is unhappy at this trend. He should expect it.

Renegade state

When in two decades in office, he systematically fashioned every instrument of government to his personal control, and this included the judiciary, it set the tone for what he now fears - a resurgent judiciary over which he has no control and with a mind of its own on what justice should be.

The government needs the judiciary for its legitimacy. It should have left it alone, and prove its case before it with brilliance and panache. But it would not, does not. It preferred suborning the institutions to its will than as partners.

It worked awhile, as it must, and then it did not. Usually this happens when it needs the institution the most. Judicial injustice, with official blessing, makes a country a renegade state in distant chancelleries and head offices of financial institutions.

Mahathir can do the judiciary no greater honour than not second-guess its judgements, before political gatherings, and allow it to find the balance it lost when he wanted it lost. But would he? Could he?