use your political authority to give justice, lack of morals the real crises in the mother fucker and scumbag in The Attorney-General’s Chamber

First is regarding mother fucker and scumbag AG himself. We must not forget that he was the main player in Sodomy 1 — the charge that Anwar was also acquitted back on 2nd September 2004. And the AG is also the main player in Sodomy 2.

If the AG allows Anwar to walk free for Sodomy 2 — just like Anwar did for Sodomy 1 — then it would be interpreted as Anwar really was fixed up on trumped-up charges and was given a sham trial. So the AG needs to at least get Anwar on Sodomy 2 to ‘prove’ that the charges were not fabricated.

But did Anwar’s acquittal on Monday, 9th January really come as a shock to the AG?

the Umno warlords and taikos. If Najib ‘calls off the dogs’, so to speak, he would be viewed as weak. Already, many of these warlords and taikos are saying that Najib is weak and that the ‘3M team’ should take over.

Remember what happened to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the last Prime Minister, when he ‘allowed’ Anwar’s acquittal on Sodomy 1 and did badly in the 2008 general election? Well, that will be the fate that Najib will face as well.

Abdullah Badawi ‘allowed’ Anwar to walk free for Sodomy I and ‘lost’ the 2008 GE. Najib ‘allowed’ Anwar to walk free for Sodomy 2 and will probably do as badly as Abdullah Badawi did come the next election.

That would mean Najib would be ousted by the Umno warlords and taikos, just like Abdullah Badawi was.

This is not about Anwar. I repeat: this is not about Anwar. It is about Najib’s survival. Najib has seen what happened to Abdullah Badawi. He knows that this will also happen to him as well. And to prevent that from happening he needs to ensure that he is not seen as weak by ‘allowing’ Anwar to walk free. He also must make sure the next GE is not a repeat of the 2008 GE.

who ordered Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, to have been photographed with and met with Najib?after the supposed sodomy took place and before he filed the charges against Anwar. Dr Mohamed Osman, who examined the then 23-year old Saiful at Hospital Pusrawi Sdn Bhd on Jalan Tun Razak in Kuala Lumpur on June 28, 2008, filed a medical report that found no evidence of tearing or scarring that would indicate the youth had been sodomized. When Saiful went to another government hospital to obtain a diagnosis, doctors at that hospital refused to confirm that he had been sodomized as well. Nonetheless, Saiful filed the assault report four hours later at a nearby police kiosk.

Politics of the Acquittal

The burning question is who was responsible for the decision to acquit Anwar on January 9: the Courts or the politicians. Did the trial judge actually make the decision himself or was it in reality a political decision.

The fact that this is the principal aftermath of the acquittal itself is a commentary on the perception by Malaysians (including its lawyers) that in “political” cases the Courts are not independent of the executive.

In the four senior Commonwealth countries whose common law system Malaysia adopts, viz, England, India, Australia and Canada, no right thinking person (and certainly no lawyer) would question a judge’s independence if a similar acquittal had taken place in like circumstances. But not in Malaysia!

The Judge

The only sure way for any lawyer to predict an outcome in a lengthy trial like Anwar’s is to review the trial judge’s overall conduct of that trial and then make a projection. In every criminal prosecution in Malaysia, elementary principles established over centuries forming the bedrock of our criminal jurisprudence have to be applied by every judge (juries having been abolished).

In the course of a trial a judge would have to make numerous rulings on procedural and evidential matters that would have a great bearing on his final decision. He also has to make a fundamental decision when the prosecution closes its case, viz, whether the defence has a case to meet. Only if he is satisfied that these elements have been proven by the prosecution on whom the burden solely rests, and which never shifts to the accused, should the judge call the defence.

Accordingly, applying the only rational basis available to those legally trained, the conduct of the judge during Anwar’s trial was consistently in one direction: totally in support of the prosecution’s case, and wholly unsympathetic to the accused. Hence, a conviction was inevitable.

In consequence, the judge’s acquittal was a U-turn of massive proportions. Lawyers who appear in court, that is, barristers, advocates or counsels, quickly develop a skill in “reading” judges. This is the human element in the judicial process.

No two judges in any country are alike. Each judge has his or her own temperament, personality, likes, dislikes and other idiosyncrasies. Having spoken to experienced lawyers who attended Anwar’s trial for substantial periods and whose antennae on “judge-reading” I respect, the judge’s behaviour on January 9 was in stark contrast with his general demeanour on the bench throughout the trial.

Lawyers who were in court on January 9 informed me that the judge was very edgy in his brief appearance (less than two minutes), merely announcing his decision in a couple of sentences and disappearing thereafter. Having reserved his decision for some months, he ought to have had his written reasons (grounds of judgment) ready for release that day. They have yet to be distributed. Most importantly, he was aware that the acquittal contradicted all his prior rulings against Anwar during the trial.

In the days following Anwar’s acquittal, apologists for the system (including Cabinet Minister Rais Yatim) have been heralding the dawn of a new era in judicial independence. Let me douse such naïve enthusiasm. Cases deemed “politically sensitive” by the judges are so predictable: the Executive always succeeds. Cases triggered by the Perak crisis of 2009 and those filed on behalf of the opposition states of Selangor, Kedah, Kelantan and Penang are recent examples.

An extreme illustration is provided by Kelantan’s oil royalty civil suit against PETRONAS (I disclose my involvement as Counsel for Kelantan). Bizarre and unprecedented rulings have been given by all the three levels of the highest Courts resulting in a transfer of a commercial dispute to the Civil Division, the intervention by the Federal Government as additional defendant when no claim is sought against it and the denial of discovery of documents by PETRONAS which is automatic in a writ action.

Accordingly, the Anwar acquittal will not be the harbinger of better things to come from the judiciary. One swallow does not make a summer!

Najib

If it is not the judge’s decision to acquit Anwar, it must follow that it was a political decision. Certainly two decisions indicate prior knowledge of government of the acquittal. First, it overturned its decision to prohibit the assembly of Anwar supporters in Kuala Lumpur, and agreed to allow them to congregate outside the court — even the police agree that there would be no risk when the crowd receives good news! \

Secondly, the government issued a press announcement within an hour of the court’s decision, welcoming the acquittal. Our bureaucracy never works at that speed.

It is ironic that from its first public announcement, the government has been claiming credit for the acquittal because it apparently demonstrates judicial independence. This is entirely misplaced. In a system of true separation of powers where the Judiciary stands proudly and bravely independent of the executive, the executive can never be praised when judges make independent decisions.

That is how the system actually works. In Malaysia the system has been skewered from Merdeka and the executive can only be criticized for causing it. The executive can never receive praise if the system works as it is supposed to (which is not even the position in Malaysia).

What these announcements demonstrate is a “Freudian slip” on the part of the executive. It confirms that past judicial decisions were contrived at its behest. Because perception shades into reality, it would be difficult to convince the typical Malaysian who has become so cynical of the politically motivated prosecution and trial of Anwar, that his ultimate verdict was not similarly politically motivated. Thus, the fruit of a politically motivated trial is a politically motivated verdict.

Because it was a politically motivated trial, the ultimate acquittal decision was grounded in politics. It is an accepted premise among those campaigning for the hearts and minds of the Malaysian electorate, particularly in the Peninsula, that the real contest at the next election is for the Malay vote.

Abdul Gani, as attorney general, has the sole discretion to grant the appeal and the matter doesn’t rest with either Saiful or UMNO. If the prosecution goes ahead with Saiful’s demand for an appeal of the case against Anwar, however, it brings back a difficult question that prosecutors have ignored since the onset of the case in June of 2008, when Saiful lodged a report claiming he had been sodomized by the opposition leader.

From the start, the prosecution has alleged that the reported contact between Saiful and Anwar was consensual. In court during the trial, which began in February of 2010, Saiful acknowledged that he had gone to Anwar’s condominium on the day the offense was said to have taken place with a tube of lubricant in his pocket, a clear indication that he knew what he was getting into. Anwar has said that he was meeting in the condo with a group of economists at the time, and while a CCTV camera picked up Saiful’s image in the lift, the former aide never entered the condo.

In any case, Saiful has never been charged by the prosecution for participation in an act of unnatural sex, as it is called in Malaysia. One lawyer in Kuala Lumpur, in an interview, compared the case to that of Anwar’s first sodomy trial in 1998, in which Munawar Anees, Anwar’s former speechwriter, was sentenced to six months in prison on the same charge. It was alleged that Munawar took an overnight flight from the United Kingdom to Malaysia to be sodomized by Anwar, then turned around and got on a plane and flew back to the UK. Anwar served six years in prison in that case, which was universally condemned by human rights organization across the world as hopelessly rigged by the government to end his political career.

Both Munawar and another alleged participant in sex with Anwar later recanted their confessions, alleging they had been tortured into pleading guilty. Munawar’s appeal was rejected, however. Anwar was ultimately freed on appeal in September of 2004.

“When (Saiful) has committed the same act that Anwar has been charged with, why has he not been charged?” the lawyer asked. “Dr Munawar, who was basically a Saiful, was dragged into court and sentenced for six months’ jail for being the sodomee and not the sodomist. In this case the sodomist is charged with the same complaint, and the sodomee has got off. That is the situation.”

If Saiful is insisting that he wants to appeal the charge, the lawyer said, “the prosecution should begin initiating a charge against him as well. It is the prosecuting office that acts to protect the members of the public. I would like to see Saiful charged. He is part and parcel of this whole crime. One party cannot commit this crime alone. It takes two to commit the crime.”

Prime Minister Najib has reaped considerable praise for his statement that the government had nothing to do with Zabidin’s decision and that the case had been handled by the judge on its merits. During the trial itself, witnesses testified that Saiful had delayed for 104 hours in providing a DNA sample of Anwar’s alleged sperm.

Brian McDonald, a molecular geneticist, pointed out that no sperm after ejaculation could have survived 56 hours in Saiful’s rectum – during which he said he had neither gone to the bathroom nor eaten – and another 48 hours unguarded in an unlocked safe in the office of the investigating officer prior to being handed over to the chemical laboratory for analysis. It was this concern that led Judge Zabidin to say it was impossible to be 100 percent certain that the DNA hadn’t been contaminated.

If Zabidin’s assessment is correct, as he pointed out that leaves Saiful’s testimony as the sole link to a judgment against the opposition leader. But Saiful has never been arrested nor charged with consensual sex. Nonetheless, he continues to demand to be a complaining witness.