Incompetent and compromised judiciary Koon Yew Yin | April 11, 2014
What can be done to stop all these unjust decisions being handed down by recalcitrant judges? COMMENT
kehakiman-pixThe independence and integrity of Malaysian judiciary are now at the tipping point.
During the past few years the our attention has been riveted by the exposure to an unprecedented number of court cases with important political ramifications.
These cases include the Altantuya Shaariibuu’s murder case, N Kugan’s death during police custody,
Teoh Beng Hock’s death, the PKFZ scandal, the NFC scandal, the various election appeal cases arising from the 2013 general elections, Anwar’s Sodomy I and II cases and Karpal Singh’s conviction for alleged sedition.
At no time in the country’s history has there been such a large and wide variety of politically charged cases being brought to the country’s courts of law.
If we take these cases individually and collectively, the overall impression that can be obtained from the many articles and analysis which have appeared in the online media is that the Malaysian judiciary has come under tremendous political pressure when arriving at their judgments.
Each case that I have listed above has its litany of unanswered questions such as:
why were certain people released midway through the trial while others with no obvious motive, were sent to the gallows for the Altantuya case?
Why were Rafizi Ramli and another whistleblower prosecuted, instead of the people involved in the NFC project?
Why did the Attorney General not appeal against the court’s judgment in the case of the PKFZ, involving billons of ringgit in taxpayers’ money?
The bench made a reserved judgment on the Herald’s case, but in Anwar’s Sodomy II case, why was there such haste to sentence him to five years’ jail?
Although Malaysians have generally not paid much attention to the issue of the relationship between judicial authority and political power (including the power and neutrality of the Attorney General) in the past, I believe that the cumulative effect of all these cases has resulted in our rakyat shedding their indifference and passivity on this key issue of the independence of our judiciary.
Incompetent and compromised
As noted by my good friend and highly respected former court of appeals judge NH Chan, how could it be, we may ask, that we are the only country, out of all the other common law countries, in the entire world that has so many incompetent judges?
There must be something wrong in our system for the appointment of judges. There was a time when judges were appointed from the cream of the legal profession. Sadly those days were gone.
Besides commenting on the incompetency of our judges, Chan had asked the crucial question:
What can be done to stop all these unjust decisions being handed down by recalcitrant judges?
His answer is simple: It is that Malaysians must use the power of the ballot box to bring about change.
This is a solution which I am in total agreement with.
The ordinary people of this country must do something about the sorry state of our judiciary with its host of incompetent judges.
We cannot and must not allow this state of incompetence among our judges to continue. We must exercise the power of the vote to oust the incumbent government that was responsible for the appointment of such judges who, because they have shown themselves to be incompetent, have made our country the laughing stock in the entire common law world.
It takes only a simple Act of parliament to rid the country of the incompetent and, therefore, unjust judges.
Even the incumbent government could redeem itself by passing a law declaring those judges who had proved themselves to be incompetent be removed from office forthwith in ignominy, with all privileges of their office, such as their pension, withdrawn.
Anwar’s case: The tipping point
I also believe that Anwar’s sodomy verdict is the final tipping point for many Malaysians in their concern to change the government of the country and to recover the independence of our judiciary.
Should Anwar’s appeal be rejected, I have no doubt that there will be a national and international uproar which will only end with the BN being thrown out of power.
The BN government must realise that the political awakening that Anwar has unleashed in the nation cannot be suppressed just by throwing him into prison with the assistance of what many see as a compromised judiciary.
That political awakening will only multiply many fold should Anwar die or be incapacitated while in prison.
Koon Yew Yin is an investor and philantropist. He is the founder IJM Group, Gamuda and Mudajaya.
Three weeks ago, we were told that the final words from the cockpit were “All right, good night”. In the past few days, the DCA issued a correction and said the final words were “Good night. Malaysian Three-Seven-Zero”.
How can the public be expected to put their faith in the DCA or the investigative bodies with such a simple error as this? So what else is wrong?
Number Six: MAS CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya. When the reputations of the pilot and co-pilot on MH370 were being trashed, Ahmad Jauhari failed to defend his men. Although he did speak on their behalf, he waited several days and the damage was already done. His failure to act immediately demoralised all of the MAS employees.
The sending of a text message to the families of the passengers and crew of MH370, ahead of Najib’s announcement that MH370 had gone down in the southern Indian Ocean, is symptomatic of the poor customer relations in MAS. Many people have previously stated that their complaints are rarely acknowledged or addressed.
Number Seven: Chief of the Armed Forces Zulkifeli Mohd Zin. He despatched ships from Lumut on the night MH370 disappeared. He then claimed that a C-130 plane was sent to scout the area the following morning.
What made Zulkifeli confident that he was scouring a potential crash site, thousands of kilometres from where Najib had directed others in the search and rescue (SAR) operations? Is Zulkifeli hiding something from us?
Number Eight: Chief of the RMAF Rodzali Daud. An unidentified plane was picked up by military radar around 200 nautical miles northwest of Penang in the Straits of Malacca, at about the time MH370 went missing. The military failed to act on this information, wasting both time and opportunity.
Number Nine: IGP Khalid Abu Bakar. When asked about the contradictory descriptions of the men using stolen passports, a dismissive Khalid said, “Why ask me? Ask Immigration, or ask Interpol.”
The defence minister asked everyone to avoid speculation, but Khalid said that his policemen were analysing all the speculation on the Internet to help in the MH370 investigations.
The IGP should focus on facts, rather than investigating speculation and rumour. He should chase criminals, rather than hound opposition politicians and NGOs.
Number Ten: Witch-doctor Ibrahim Mat Zain, or Raja Bomoh. This shaman heaped ridicule on the country when, at the entrance to KLIA, he used his bamboo binoculars and two coconuts to divine that MH370 had been hijacked by elves and the plane was either suspended in mid-air or had crashed into the sea. He should be jailed if he refuses to say who sent him to KLIA, to mock the suffering of the passengers and crew of MH370.
Bonus: It is reported that Najib’s favourite number is 11. When former PM Mahathir Mohamad resigned, he continued to make his presence felt by refusing to hand over the controls of the airship Malaysia, which he was flying to mediocrity. Mahathir completes the list by being the eleventh member of Malaysia’s Hall of Shame.
Raja Bomoh to join MH370 search mission Zefry Dahalan | April 11, 2014
The international search and rescue team in Australia will soon be assisted by Ibrahim who says his Malay traditional beliefs can work together with science.
Raja bomoh is going to shame us again!....this time in Australia as he go to Perth to join the search team for MH370.The international press will have a field day recording his antics!
MH370 Malaysia’s government has begun investigating civil aviation and military authorities to determine why opportunities to identify and track Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 were missed in the chaotic hours after it vanished, two officials said.
The preliminary internal enquiries come as tensions mount between civilian and military authorities over who bears most responsibility for the initial confusion and any mistakes that led to a week-long search in the wrong ocean.
“What happened at that time is being investigated and I can’t say any more than that because it involves the military and the government,” a senior government official told Reuters.
In an interview with Reuters last weekend, Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said internal enquiries were under way, although he declined to give details.
A government spokesperson did not respond to Reuters questions over whether an investigation had been launched. The senior government source said it was aimed at getting a detailed picture of the initial response. It was unclear which government department was in charge or whether a formal probe had been opened.
“The initial assumption was that the aircraft could have diverted due to mechanical issues or, in the worst case scenario, crashed,” said a senior Malaysian civilian source. “That is what we were working on.”
Officials at Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, which oversees air traffic controllers, the Defence Ministry and the air force directed requests for comment to the Prime Minister’s Office, which did not respond
That assumption took hold despite no distress call or other communication coming from the cockpit, which could have been a clue that the plane had been hijacked or deliberately diverted.
The five sources together gave Reuters the most detailed account yet of events in the hour after the plane vanished. All declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue and because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
One senior military official said air traffic control had informed the military at around 2.00am that a plane was missing. The standard operating procedure was to do so within 15 minutes, he said. Another military source said the notification was slow in coming, but did not give a time.
Civil aviation officials told Reuters their response was in line with guidelines, but they did not give a specific time for when the military was informed.
Once alerted, military radar picked up an unidentified plane heading west across peninsular Malaysia, the senior military official said. The air force has said a plane that could have been MH370 was last plotted on military radar at 2.15am, 320km north-west of the west coast state of Penang.
Top military officials have publicly said Malaysia’s US and Russian-made fighter jets stationed at air force bases in Penang and the east coast state of Kuantan were not scrambled to intercept the plane because it was not viewed as “hostile”.
“When we were alerted, we got our boys to check the military radar. We noticed that there was an unmarked plane flying back but (we) could not confirm (its identity),” said the senior military source. “Based on the information we had from ATC (Air Traffic Control) and DCA (Department of Civil Aviation), we did not send up any jets because it was possibly mechanical problems and the plane might have been going back to Penang.”
The military has not publicly acknowledged it tracked the plane in real time as it crossed back over the peninsula.
Two civilian aviation officials said military bureaucracy delayed the sharing of this information, although they gave no precise timeframe for when it was handed over.
“The armed forces knew much earlier that the aircraft could have turned back. That is why the search was expanded to include the Straits of Malacca within a day or two,” said a second senior civilian source, who was familiar with the initial search, referring to the narrow stretch of water between Indonesia and Malaysia, on the western side of the peninsula.
“But the military did not confirm this until much later due to resistance from senior officers, and the government needed to step in. We wasted our time in the South China Sea.”
Government sources have said Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had to force the military to turn over its raw radar data to investigators during the first week after the flight’s disappearance.
Military officials have said they did not want to risk causing confusion by sharing the data before it had been verified, adding this was why Air Force chief Rodzali Daud (i) went to the air base in Penang on March 9, where the plane’s final radar plot was recorded.
On the same day, Rodzali said the search was being expanded to the west coast, although Reuters has not been able to determine if that meant the data was being shared with other Malaysian officials.
On March 12, four days after Flight MH370 disappeared, Rodzali told reporters there was still no confirmation the unidentified plane had been Flight MH370, but added Malaysia was sharing the radar data with international civilian and military authorities, including those from the United States.
Authorities called off the search in the South China Sea on March 15 after Najib said satellite data showed the plane could have taken a course anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean.
A sixth source, a senior official in the civil aviation sector, said the plane’s disappearance had exposed bureaucratic dysfunction in Malaysia, which has rarely been subject to such international demands for transparency. “There was never the need for these silos to speak to one another. It’s not because of ill intent, it’s just the way the system was set up,” the official said.
The accounts given to Reuters reveal growing tensions between civilian officials, the military and Malaysia Airlines over whether more could have been done in those initial hours.
One of the Reuters sources said military officials in particular were concerned they could lose their jobs.
Tensions have also emerged between the government and state-controlled Malaysia Airlines.
Malaysia’s defence minister and acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said in an interview with China’s CCTV that the airline would have to “answer” for its mistakes in dealing with the relatives of the some 150 Chinese passengers on board.
In his interview with Reuters, Malaysia Airlines chief Ahmad Jauhari played down talk of tension, saying there were “slight differences of opinion”.
MAS, AirAsia to appeal against RM10m in fine Publish date: Fri, 11 Apr 15:34 KUALA LUMPUR: Both Malaysia Airline System Bhd and AirAsia Bhd will appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal against Malaysian Competition Competition (MyCC)'s decision of maintaining its fine of RM10 million each. The two airlines yesterday informed Bursa Malaysia in a separate filing that their solicitors will be instructed to lodge the appeals after MyCC slapped them with the fine for infringing the Competition Act 2010 in September last year. The airlines were found to be in breach of the market-sharing prohibition of the Act, as market-sharing is considered to be a serious infringement under the Act and can lead to distorting or restricting market competition. MAS and AirAsia had entered into an equity-swap agreement in August 2011, which controversially saw key executives from the rivals sitting on one another's board of directors. The equity-swap deal had triggered allegations that both companies were intending to create effective monopoly of domestic air routes. "Market sharing is considered a serious infringement under the Act as it is deemed to have the object of significantly preventing, restricting, or distorting competition in any market for goods and services," said Tan Sri Siti Norma Yaakob, the chairman of the commission last September.
Attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail is currently in the UK to discuss who will have custody of MH370’s black box once it is found, said Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
“That will be announced in the very near future. The attorney-general is in the UK right now discussing exactly that.
“The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the experts involved are identifying based on international law and domestic law who actually does have custody over the black box, but I would like to address that when we actually do find the black box,” he said when asked about the matter today.
According to Bernama, the Boeing 777-200ER is registered in Malaysia and owned by MAS. And under the International Convention on Civil Aviation, the country of origin of the aircraft, which is Malaysia, is obliged to launch an investigation and secure the wreckage.
The International Community should take possession of the Black Box if found for analysis and verification so that the whole World knows the real truth and nothing but the truth.
Please dont give custody of the Black Box to the ruthless Kang Kong govt.The contents will be deleted and new recordings will be fabricated. The pilot may be blame and ultimately Anwar. The conspirators are working overtime in putrajaya?
This book is the result of the author's many years of experience and observation throughout his 26 years in the stockbroking industry. It was written for general public to learn to invest based on facts and not on fantasies or hearsay....
rajaumnok
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Posted by rajaumnok > 2014-04-11 11:11 | Report Abuse
Quote..
Incompetent and compromised judiciary
Koon Yew Yin
| April 11, 2014
What can be done to stop all these unjust decisions being handed down by recalcitrant judges?
COMMENT
kehakiman-pixThe independence and integrity of Malaysian judiciary are now at the tipping point.
During the past few years the our attention has been riveted by the exposure to an unprecedented number of court cases with important political ramifications.
These cases include the Altantuya Shaariibuu’s murder case, N Kugan’s death during police custody,
Teoh Beng Hock’s death, the PKFZ scandal, the NFC scandal, the various election appeal cases arising from the 2013 general elections, Anwar’s Sodomy I and II cases and Karpal Singh’s conviction for alleged sedition.
At no time in the country’s history has there been such a large and wide variety of politically charged cases being brought to the country’s courts of law.
If we take these cases individually and collectively, the overall impression that can be obtained from the many articles and analysis which have appeared in the online media is that the Malaysian judiciary has come under tremendous political pressure when arriving at their judgments.
Each case that I have listed above has its litany of unanswered questions such as:
why were certain people released midway through the trial while others with no obvious motive, were sent to the gallows for the Altantuya case?
Why were Rafizi Ramli and another whistleblower prosecuted, instead of the people involved in the NFC project?
Why did the Attorney General not appeal against the court’s judgment in the case of the PKFZ, involving billons of ringgit in taxpayers’ money?
The bench made a reserved judgment on the Herald’s case, but in Anwar’s Sodomy II case, why was there such haste to sentence him to five years’ jail?
Although Malaysians have generally not paid much attention to the issue of the relationship between judicial authority and political power (including the power and neutrality of the Attorney General) in the past, I believe that the cumulative effect of all these cases has resulted in our rakyat shedding their indifference and passivity on this key issue of the independence of our judiciary.
Incompetent and compromised
As noted by my good friend and highly respected former court of appeals judge NH Chan, how could it be, we may ask, that we are the only country, out of all the other common law countries, in the entire world that has so many incompetent judges?
There must be something wrong in our system for the appointment of judges. There was a time when judges were appointed from the cream of the legal profession. Sadly those days were gone.
Besides commenting on the incompetency of our judges, Chan had asked the crucial question:
What can be done to stop all these unjust decisions being handed down by recalcitrant judges?
His answer is simple: It is that Malaysians must use the power of the ballot box to bring about change.
This is a solution which I am in total agreement with.
The ordinary people of this country must do something about the sorry state of our judiciary with its host of incompetent judges.
We cannot and must not allow this state of incompetence among our judges to continue. We must exercise the power of the vote to oust the incumbent government that was responsible for the appointment of such judges who, because they have shown themselves to be incompetent, have made our country the laughing stock in the entire common law world.
It takes only a simple Act of parliament to rid the country of the incompetent and, therefore, unjust judges.
Even the incumbent government could redeem itself by passing a law declaring those judges who had proved themselves to be incompetent be removed from office forthwith in ignominy, with all privileges of their office, such as their pension, withdrawn.
Anwar’s case: The tipping point
I also believe that Anwar’s sodomy verdict is the final tipping point for many Malaysians in their concern to change the government of the country and to recover the independence of our judiciary.
Should Anwar’s appeal be rejected, I have no doubt that there will be a national and international uproar which will only end with the BN being thrown out of power.
The BN government must realise that the political awakening that Anwar has unleashed in the nation cannot be suppressed just by throwing him into prison with the assistance of what many see as a compromised judiciary.
That political awakening will only multiply many fold should Anwar die or be incapacitated while in prison.
Koon Yew Yin is an investor and philantropist. He is the founder IJM Group, Gamuda and Mudajaya.
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2014/04/11/incompetent-and-compromised-judiciary/
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