“Crisis? What Crisis?”

[ excellent poster by mob1900 ]

Ah, Malaysia’s favourite Nazi and denial artiste is back in top form.

Still got faith in the ‘independent’ inquiry panel? The half-cooked PR effort by the govt to stave off the Royal Commission has been hamstrung even before it starts by its ‘terms of reference’, which is “…to investigate if the Lingam tape is authentic”. No mention on what happens if the tape is (Heaven forbid) found to be genuine.

Extracted from Lim Kit Siang’s blog: (bold highlights mine)

“…In restricting the panel to the question of the authenticity of the Lingam Tape instead of allowing full investigations into all aspects of the allegations of perversion of the course of justice and the compromising of judicial independence, impartiality and integrity raised by the video clip, the government is avoiding the imperative issue of the long-standing rot in the judiciary and the urgent need to restore national and international confidence in the system of justice with a truly independent judiciary and a just rule of law.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Tape would have first to address the issue of the authenticity of the video clip and there is no reason why an independent panel should be formed with the very narrow and restricted focus of deciding whether the video clip is authentic or otherwise, without the further powers of proceeding to further conduct comprehensive investigations into all the allegations of perversion of the course of justice and the compromising with judicial independence, impartiality and integrity.

In short, the government is trying to focus public attention on the technical question about the authenticity of the Lingam Tape and distract and disregard it from the urgent, imperative and substantive issue of the long-standing rot in the system of justice which must be identified and stopped…“

Extracted from Malaysiakini, below: (red highlights mine)

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‘What crisis? I don’t see any’

Sep 27, 07 12:45pm

There is no crisis in the judiciary and neither is there any scandal involved, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz. And he blamed the opposition for creating the scandal in order to erode public confidence in the judiciary. “No crisis, no problems. I don’t see any scandal,” he was reported as saying in the media today. “These are all efforts by the opposition to create distrust and erode public confidence in the judiciary,” he added. He said that opposition parties wanted to influence citizens not to have confidence in the judiciary. Nazri said this last night when asked to comment on the march by Bar Council members to the Prime Minister’s Department yesterday morning to submit two memorandums. About 2,000 lawyers and other members of the public participated in the march, braving a heavy downpour and a strong police presence. The memorandums called for the setting up of a royal commission of inquiry to investigate a video clip showing senior lawyer VK Lingam purportedly brokering appointment of judges and the other for the establishment of an independent judicial commission to appoint judges. “They should go and check the facts first, verify the clip first. At the moment we do not know whether the tape is authentic. So we cannot jump to conclusion and lawyers are the people who should not jump to conclusions in the first place,” Nazri was quoted as saying by Bernama. Three-man independent panel He said that the lawyers’ march was “unbecoming” given that the authenticity of the videotape recording had yet to be determined. He also shot down the Bar Council’s memorandums to the prime minister. “There’s no need (for such a judicial commission) as there is no crisis in our judiciary,” he stressed. “They wish that we can be like Pakistan, but it isn’t.” (He was referring to street protests by lawyers there over the sacking of the country’s top judge.) He added that the government had formed a three-man independent panel headed by retired Chief Judge of Malaya Haidar Mohd Noor with former Court of Appeal judge Mahadev Shankar and social activist Lee Lam Thye to conduct an impartial probe into the controversial video clip. The panel members will be receiving their appointment letters from Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak today. The de facto law minister also said Parliament was not the place to question or debate the conduct of judges as this would violate the independence of the judiciary.