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FAC News - Friday, March 21, 2003 8:44 AM Attorney-General flies into a rage Around Sankara Nair is one of Anwar Ibrahim’s solicitors and the document in question was Anwar Ibrahim’s Affidavit that was being filed in the Federal Court even as I was going through them. “Wow!” I said. “Wait until the court gets a load of this. This is going to blow the lid of the entire conspiracy.” With this new piece of evidence, how the Federal Court is still going to uphold Anwar’s guilty verdict and not declare his trial a mistrial is beyond me. I am certainly not a lawyer and do not pretend to be one. But you do not need to be a lawyer - all you need is a brain - to see that this is certainly grounds enough for a mistrial. And, surely, to be a lawyer, especially one elevated to the position of a Federal Court Judge, one would need brains as well? The next day was a holiday so the Attorney-General did not get to see the Affidavit until Monday morning. And, when he saw it, he went into a rage. The plan was to object to Anwar’s application for a Judicial Review on grounds that the Federal Court cannot review another Federal Court’s decision. They were banking on a technicality to set aside the application. The recently retired Chief Justice had, prior to that, agreed to a “five-minute” Judicial Review just to “humour” Anwar. Five minutes is all they need to say, “No!” “Why then bother to hold one at all?” asked another Federal Court Judge who had been selected to sit in the three-man panel. “Well, they want a Judicial Review, so we will give them a Judicial Review. We will listen to them for five minutes, and then turn it down.” But now this is not so easy anymore. The Federal Court will no longer be able to base its so-called “judgment” merely on facts of the previous trial. It now has to also take into consideration this new evidence. And this new evidence certainly supports the allegation of a conviction obtained via fabricated evidence. Around lunchtime that same Monday, the Federal Court sent Nair a fax saying that the Judicial Review scheduled for the next morning would have to be postponed to another yet undecided date because the Attorney-General had requested for a five-man panel of judges and the court needed time to find two more judges. This story sounded far-fetched so we did some probing and what was revealed was that they needed more time to study the Affidavit. They realised it was not such a pushover after all and it would be impossible to ask the court to just ignore it. What upset the Attorney-General like hell was that the Affidavit made him look like a slime ball. In fact, he took the Affidavit as a personal attack on him and extremely damaging to his reputation. What he probably failed to realise is, one first of all needs to have a reputation before it can be destroyed. If is not there, then it cannot be destroyed. “I will fight till the end,” shouted to Attorney-General, the sounds of his ranting and raving reverberating through the corridors of injustice. Yes, at least he realises that the end is near. His predecessor (another of the conspirators) once said, in his retirement speech, “Let history judge me.” Soon after he suffered a stroke and has been in a coma ever since – and history is certainly now judging him. Our present Attorney-General said, “We are not Angels and therefore are not perfect, so we do not always make the right decisions.” And to this the State Assemblyman for Lunas, Saifuddin Nasution, replied, “Yes, you may not be an Angel. But you are not human either. At the time you fixed up Anwar and got him convicted on fabricated evidence you were the Devil.” Hmm…that reminds me of the late Elvis song, “Devil in Disguise.” Wonder what the Devil is up to now? The Judicial Review, whenever it is going to be held now, is certainly an event not to be missed. As the plot thickens!
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