the AG’s office must show excruciating circumstances to allow a private practitioner to represent this office. What are these circumstances?Shafee’ s claim that the meeting with Mahathir was just to pay respects especially with the presence of Mat Zain and Ramli Yusuf is just taking the Court of Appeal judges for fools. But then the judges were cool with this. Which way are our courts going ? Also Transformation for the worse ? The disgusting Judiciary with absolutely no qualms about just repeating whatever was said by Shafee! This is a kangaroo court with all these members of the Judiciary not fit to be there at all! Only in Malaysia we can have these kind of court. Hearings judgment served only one useful purpose. The sheer scale of its magnanimity towards the accused .lit a fuse under the volcano of collective guilt. The lava is spewing from myriad crevices, scorching and burning many-layered masks that have hidden deceit for a generation. As memories were stoked, officials, some perhaps frustrated by the fact that their silence had not been rewarded, revealed how successive governments had intervened to slow down the judicial process and sabotage any chance from this point on, Mahahthir Mohamad and Najib Razak have sealed their doom. Leniency can no longer be offered these obscene and perverted criminals of the first order. Our judiciary under the sinful AG will never change.Don’t do the math. It may turn you into a cynic.
This is the only place on earth where we will find a lawyer in private practice who defends high profile politically-linked clients but at the same time be appointed by the government of the day to act as the public prosecutor.Feel disgusted and very sad of the stature of judiciary. These judges have been trained in jurisprudence. If they have at least an iota of conscience, they won’t submit to the political masters. They must know that money and promotion are not everything in life. They have to answer God and face their karma for their own destruction.
On one hand, he defends all political figures who wield a lot of influence in government decision-making and on the other, he acts as the public prosecutor who is also the government’s legal advisor and protector of the public interest. In a country of limitless possibilities, this is another twisted tale. I hope the wisdom and uprightness of justice will prevail.
Despite being a former colony of Britain and having English common law as our basis, we seem to have completely forgotten our basic natural justice jurisprudence. This is what happens when we have the same government in power since independence.
Shafee is mired in controversyis a classical instance of a crumb dipped in the pickle of hypocrisy.A three-man Court of Appeal bench led by Datuk Aziah Ali ’s judgment served only one useful purpose. The sheer scale of its magnanimity towards the accused lit a fuse under the volcano of collective guilt. It cannot be all the affidavits signed by Mr. Mat Zain bloated. If it did the court could ask for another copy. Something is strange as it is illogical for anyone attempt to bloat their ic number to cover their identity. After seeing so many election petition being dismissed on various grounds I am paying more attention to what Mat Zain said later today. I think imprisoning Anwar would make him a Mandela. but then again desperate people will do desperate things.The lava is spewing from myriad crevices, scorching and burning many-layered masks that have hidden deceit for a generation. As memories were stoked, officials, some perhaps frustrated by the fact that their silence had not been rewardedAnwar’s second application lacked merit.She said Datuk Mat Zain Ibrahim’ statutory declaration which Anwar relied upon could not be used. its collaborators, including judges of course, have sustained themselves with a lie, that it is disaster since design is an exact replica of an sodmy 1Why is Shafee so desperate to prosecute Anwar on the fiat of the AG? Even if the AG approached him, Shafee could have declined. It all points to a personal agenda to get Anwar convicted.The political establishment assumed that June 7 would be just another day in a long calendar, possibly punctuated by an occasional, futile scream. The court was fortified, and entry denied to petitioners, victims and media. My one memory of this courtroom, gleaned from television, shall be of the smug grin of an obese Ghani Patail laughing at Anwar contorted by rage and frustration, who knew that the system which had stolen his right had also cheated .
The purpose of a criminal trial is to see justice being done and not to secure a conviction at all costs. Does it serve the public interest and the need to do justice if Shafee is allowed to conduct the appeal? Clearly not.
Shafee is mired in controversy; has his own ambition to become the next AG; and has consistently made prejudicial comments against Anwar in public and private. He is not a fit and proper person to conduct the appeal for the public prosecutor.
How can Shafee hope to be impartial and objective when he has a personal hatred for the accused? Any reasonable right-thinking member of the public would come to the conclusion that the prosecution cannot possibly be fair and objective with Shafee at its head.
Anwar filed the application on December 6 after the statutory declaration (SD) of the former Kuala Lumpur Criminal Investigation Department chief was made public on December 2.
Anwar said Shafee was not a fit and proper person to be a Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) due to the revelation in the SD.
Mat Zain, in his 31-page SD, said he went with Shafee and former Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Datul Ramli Yusof to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s house during the Hari Raya period this year, where they allegedly discussed the wrongdoing of Attorney General (AG) Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail.
Aziah said the central issue to be decided was whether Anwar’s application was sustainable and it depended on the SD.
“Our plain reading is that the SD is not relevant as it mainly related to the black eye incident which had been decided on earlier,” she said.
She said the bench also concurred with Shafee, who appeared as counsel, that the SD was hearsay evidence and Mat Zain was not available to ascertain the truth.
She also said there were latent defects in the SD as Mat Zain did not provide his identity card number and address, which had been blotted out in the document.
There was no conceivable evidence as to why Mat Zain refused to give these details, Aziah said.
“For this reason, the SD cannot be accepted as cogent evidence and the application must be dismissed.”
the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 Mahathir till Najib years; this central truth has not.A nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. Why do we say “law and order” rather than “order and law”? Simple. Law comes before order. Law defines the nature of order. Law is the difference between civilization and chaos. Law is evolutionary: the edicts of tribes, chiefs and dynasties lifted human societies from scattered peril to structured coexistence. The laws of democracy have vaulted us to the acme of social cohesion, for they eliminated arbitrary diktat and introduced collective will. The divine right of kings is dead; it has been reborn as the secular right of an elected Parliament.Cynicism is never irrational. The irrational, often wrong, sometimes right, are impelled by instinct, heart or even conscience. Cynics are morality-proof. They prefer data to truth. What is justice? It is not just to be done but must be seen to be done. Much leeway should be given to the accused to have a fair trial Instead of giving convincing facts to rebut allegations against him, Shafee went on a rampage of personal attacks against former Kuala Lumpur Criminal Investigation Department chief Mat Zain Ibrahim.
And so, the main accusations against him remains effectively undemolished – that he had illegally concealed to the court his knowledge of AG Abdul Gani Patail’s alleged fabrication of evidence, in particular, that related to Anwar Ibrahim’s ‘black eye’ incident, for which Mat Zain had furnished unchallenged evidence of specific nature.
Compounding the case against Shafee is his role as lawyer for BN and its top guns including Najib, his wife and Dr Mahathir Mohamad, all of whom regard Anwar as their sworn enemy.
And with the Anwar sodomy trial universally recognised as political persecution, could the Malaysian judiciary be possibly seen to be doing justice if Shafee is accepted as lead prosecutor?
Shafee has set the gold standard for cynicism. It operates on four axioms: public memory is a dwarf; anger is effervescent; media can be massaged at the appropriate moment; any public crisis can be assuaged with crumbs, while the promotion of private interests continues off-screen.
Lawyers for Liberty is extremely concerned (although not surprised) with the Court of Appeal’s dismissal of Anwar Ibrahim’s application to disqualify private lawyer Muhammad Shafee from leading the Attorney General’s Chambers’ appeal against Anwar Ibrahim’s acquittal for sodomy.
Shafee’s appointment as Deputy Public Prosecutor smacks of desperation and sets another bad precedent, sending the wrong message that the authorities will go to extraordinary lengths to secure the conviction of UMNO’s political adversaries.
Shafee is a well known UMNO lawyer and has appeared in court and advised in several matters that concern UMNO’s interests and has admitted so in his CV. He has acted and advised former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansoh, all known and bitter political adversaries of Anwar Ibrahim. Shafee is also presently defending a few high profile defamation cased filed by Anwar Ibrahim.
It cannot be over emphasised that the Public Prosecutor represents the State, the community at large and the interest of justice, and not UMNO. The purpose of a criminal prosecution is not to obtain a conviction but to place fairly and independently before the courts all available evidence to what is alleged to be a crime. While the Public Prosecutor is not ultimately responsible for determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person, he or she must ensure that an accused receives a fair trial.
In spite of Shafee’s obvious conflict of interest and unsuitability, and the AG’s Chambers’ wealth of resources and hundreds of well qualified Deputy Public Prosecutors available, he has now been appointed to lead the appeal against Anwar Ibrahim.
Shafee’s appointment further tarnishes the already battered reputation of the AG’s Chambers and reinforces public perception that the AG’s Chambers is not independent and acts at the behest of Ghani to prosecute the opposition on trumped up charges or for political offences.
Like Caesar’s wife, Shafee acting as a prosecutor must be above any trace of suspicion. One certainly cannot believe without flight of fancy that Shafee will afford Anwar Ibrahim a fair trial and treat him equally and without discrimination as he is entitled to under the Constitution.
In light of all the controversies, we call upon the Attorney General to withdraw Shafee’s appointment as DPP and to work towards restoring public confidence of the rightful role of the Public Prosecutor, one that is dignified, just and free from political interference.
The Centre on Friday made a strong case for review of the Supreme Court judgment re-criminalizing consensual gay sex between adults, saying it was time India trashed a British imposed archaic sodomy law that breaches the privacy of the LGBT community, punishing them for their sexual preference.
The Centre’s review petition, settled by its top law officer, attorney general G E Vahanvati, was unusually sharp in criticism of the December 11 judgment of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya when it said the apex court failed in its constitutional duty to protect the LGBT community’s fundamental rights.
The review petition, which matched the 98-page judgment in length, was also refreshingly frank in expressing solidarity with the LGBT community when it said, “Section 377 criminalizes the only form of sexual expression, that is penile-oral or penile-anal sex, of homosexual men and transgender/hijra persons.
“The judgment strikes at the root of the dignity and self-worth of homosexual men and transgender/hijra persons. The Supreme Court has not addressed this issue at all, despite a clear finding from the Delhi High Court on the same.” The Centre also sought an open court hearing on its review petition.
Petitions seeking review of a judgment are heard in chamber by the same bench which had pronounced the verdict without the presence of advocates. In an overwhelming majority of cases, review petitions are summarily rejected.
The Centre’s strong arguments favouring decriminalization of same-sex relationships comes after Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi criticized the SC ruling upholding the validity of Section 377.
Since Justice Singhvi, who authored the judgment, has retired, Chief Justice P Sathasivam will now nominate another judge to sit in chamber along with Justice Mukhopadhaya to consider merits of the Centre’s argument for a reconsideration of the December 8 judgment.
However, there is little chance of the review petition being taken up at least for the next 12 days as the Supreme Court is closed for the winter break and will open after January 1.
The Centre’s review petition, drafted by Devadatt Kamat and Anoopam N Prasad, was candid in admitting that successive governments and legislatures had lived with the archaic law now being viewed as draconian. They pointed to fundamental changes in societal dynamics that has forced majority of countries to decriminalize gay sex between consenting adults.
“Section 377, insofar as it criminalizes consensual sexual acts in private, falls foul of the principles of equality and liberty enshrined in our Constitution. Section 377, which criminalizes intercourse ‘against the order of nature’ is a reflection of outdated sodomy laws of the United Kingdom which were transplanted into India in 1860. They do not have any legal sanctity and, in any case, are unlawful in view of the constitutional mandate of Articles 14 (equality), 15 (non-discrimination) and 21 (right to life) of the Constitution,” it said.
It also was critical of the apex court’s view that Parliament, despite recommendations from the Law Commission, had not acted to either delete or limit the operation of Section 377 and also that courts were not empowered to strike down a law merely because society’s perception had changed.
The Centre said, “Law does not operate in a vacuum but in a social context. There has been a sea change, not just in India, but all over the world, with respect to the law on homosexuality. It is submitted that a majority of the countries across the world have legalized homosexuality.”
“Even in India, Section 377 was introduced not as a reflection of existing Indian values, but rather, it was imposed upon Indian society due to the moral values of the colonizers. Indian society prior to enactment of IPC had much greater tolerance towards homosexuality,” it said.
It faulted the “miniscule minority” tag attached to the LGBT community by the SC while ruling that there was no clear data available to infer that they were prosecuted or persecuted. The Centre said, “The number of people affected is irrelevant when it comes to deciding an issue of constitutionality. The present review petition is being filed to avoid grave miscarriage of justice to thousands of LGBT persons who have been aggrieved by the judgment of the Supreme Court and have been put to risk of prosecution and harassment, upon re-criminalization of their sexual identities.”
The Centre also wanted clarity given the apprehension expressed by the SC “whether consensual sexual acts between adults” would be viewed the way courts have historically taken note of non-consensual and coercive sexual acts against order of nature. “That was the precise issue before the court – whether consensual sexual acts should be criminalized,” the Centre said.
Times View
This paper is glad that the government has shown a sense of urgency in appealing for a review of the SC’s judgment criminalizing homosexuality. It may not have occurred to many people, including those who believe homosexuality to be “unnatural”, that all forms of sex between even a man and a woman — except penile-vaginal — are deemed as criminal under Section 377. That includes oral sex. A strict application of the law may therefore render even some of our lawmakers criminal. The oft-repeated argument that “the law isn’t enforced for such things” makes no sense. If it’s not meant to be applied, then why is it in the statute books? Besides, what’s the guarantee that some policeman somewhere won’t use it to harass and blackmail? The only litmus test for criminality that needs to be applied here is: is it consensual or not? If it’s consensual, then the State needs to get out of the way.
