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Tuesday, 20-Jan-2004 8:31 AM Court to deliver Anwar’s bail decision on Wednesday, 21 Jan Malaysia’s Court of Appeal will deliver its decision on Anwar Ibrahim’s bail application on Wednesday, 21 January 2004. But this was not achieved without the usual courtroom drama that has now become the standard setting of an Anwar trial. Monday, 19 January 2004, saw the continuation of Anwar’s bail hearing that started way back around 14 April last year, at the time he completed serving his sentence on his first six-year jail term for his “abuse of power” conviction. The six-year sentence was reduced to four years after a one-third remission so Anwar was technically “free” on 14 April 2003. Since he would have completed his first sentence on 14 April 2003 and could actually walk out of Sungai Buloh Prison a “temporary” free man, Anwar then applied for bail while he appealed against the second conviction and nine-year jail sentence for sodomy, the appeal which is still ongoing. This is taking into consideration the two jail sentences run consecutive and not concurrent, so Anwar would not need to start serving his second sentence yet until he completes his first one, which would be at midnight on 14 April 2003. And the second sentence need not commence until Anwar exhausts all avenues of appeal, which then, if he loses his appeal, would make his conviction a “confirmed” one rather than “tentative” like now. However, the court would not grant Anwar bail, so Anwar had to continue his stay in jail and start serving his second sentence. He then continued to pursue his application for bail that has been on-off for nine months now. In the latest court appearance on Monday, the judges said they were still not ready to deliver their decision on Anwar’s bail application on the excuse that the case was very complicating and they needed more time to ponder. Clearly the court was dilly-dallying and trying to play for time. They probably wanted to defer making any decision until after the coming general election seeing that any decision they make, either way, could prove detrimental to the ruling party’s performance in the election. But it has already been a long delay of nine months on a simple bail application that would normally have been decided on the spot, even for more serious cases like rape and armed robbery, so Anwar was not about to take any more crap from the judges. Anwar immediately stood up and demanded the judges confirm the date they would be delivering their decision, saying, “You have been hearing this case so long. Why must you delay?” In a feeble attempt to defend what was clearly a lame excuse, Justice Pajan Singh Gill contended that the delay was not entirely the court’s fault as Anwar himself had requested a postponement to enable him to attend his daughter’s wedding on 9 May 2003. But then that was more than seven months ago and a bit outdated. Surely in seven months this matter could have been sorted out by now. Anwar was persistent and the judge tried to silence him by warning him that his outburst bordered on contempt, to which Anwar retorted, “Do not threaten me with contempt. You are contemptuous of the law, the constitution and human dignity.” The three judges, accepting that there was no way they were going to be able to shaft Anwar any longer, held a quick conference and declared that they would deliver their decision on Wednesday. One of Anwar’s counsels, Sankara Nair, said he hoped Anwar would be granted bail. "It is long overdue, but frankly, we are not optimistic despite Abdullah Ahmad Badawi coming to power." Today, Tuesday, 20 January 2004, another of Anwar’s lawyers, Karpal Singh, will be filing an appeal against the court’s decision in not revealing the notes of the proceedings of Anwar’s trial. The notes are required to assist Anwar’s lawyers in preparing his appeal. In a most bizarre move, the court has ruled it will not be revealing these notes, which would make the preparation of Anwar’s appeal almost impossible. There are many irregularities in Anwar’s trial and the notes will reveal the many flaws that his defence team can raise to get the judgment overturned. One crucial point is the illegality of the trial in that the trial judge violated the law by not allowing Anwar time to file his notice of alibi, a procedure that is mandatory under the law. This one point alone is enough to get Anwar’s trial declared null and there are many other points too. This point, in fact, was raised earlier and there seems to be some confusion on the matter. The judges contend that Anwar never filed any alibi and this was why they decided to uphold the guilty verdict. The prosecution, however, admitted that it was and that they had in fact received a copy. This caught the judges off guard. Anwar’s lawyers then accused the judges of not properly reading the notes of the trial and this is why they are not aware of it. The notes are therefore crucial in determining whether the judges had erred so the court now refuses to hand over the notes of the trial which would expose the judges’ serious error. As what one-time Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad once said, “Hang the judges!”
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