COMMENT “I’m not the betting kind, but I would wager a lot on the chances of the motion being rejected though I would be only too happy to lose the call,” cracked R Sivarasa, the PKR MP for Subang.

NONESivarasa (left) was talking about the urgent motion he filed in Parliament urging the prime minister to request the Agong to create a tribunal to investigate attorney- general Abdul Gani Patail and former inspector-general of police Musa Hassan for alleged grave violations of the law.

The motion will be tabled today but the odds are against speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia accepting it for debate by the House, an act that would give impetus to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s desire enunciated last September to see Malaysia become the “best democracy.”

Intentions professed do not necessarily conduce to actions taken, but if the House’s resident comptroller of debate intends to match parliamentary deed to prime ministerial word, he has to allow the motion because of its urgency, its specificity and relevance to grave public concerns.

Last Sunday’s report by Malaysiakini, that gave a detailed account of the alleged machinations of Gani and Musa Hassan in the episode of the detention and later release of an illegal gambling syndicate suspect in Johor five years ago, is volcanic in nature.

The web news portal claims it has in its hands documents purportedly showing that both Gani and Musa allegedly engaged in conduct that would make them liable to charges of corruption, abuse of power and fabrication of evidence.

NONE“Prove it, prove it,” was Home Minister Hishamuddin Husssain’s (left) testy response to the report by Malaysiakini.

The Umno MP for Sembrong, though qualified in the law, is apparently not learned enough in the imperatives of democratic governance: that public officials, particularly of the stature of Gani and Musa, should be like Caesar’s wife - above suspicion.

The Malaysiakini report has spawned suspicion that dark misdeeds occurred in the case involving the illegal gaming syndicate suspect.

Hence the urgency, specificity and weighty relevance of the Subang MP’s motion that comes up for the speaker’s decision.

Pandikar Amin may well be like High Court judge Mohd Zabidin Diah, that is, until just before the point which saw the latter acquit opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim of a charge of sodomy last January:

In prior conduct the speaker has not shown a capacity for out-of-turn decisions just as the judge had not evinced, in the course of the sodomy trial, an ability to depart from the norm.   

‘Hope is a good breakfast but a lean supper’

But after the surprise of Justice Zabidin’s acquittal of Anwar, sceptics are a little less certain that the predictable is normative in Malaysian public affairs.

“Though hope,” mused Sivarasa, “is a good breakfast but a lean supper, one cannot help but persist in hope.”  

The lawyer is hoping that the gravity and urgency of the issues raised in the Malaysiakini report would prompt the House speaker to permit debate though Pandikar’s rejection yesterday of his fellow PKR MP Zuraidah Kamaruddin’s urgent motion to debate issues surrounding the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal dims the prospects somewhat.

“We cannot be discouraged by the speaker’s seemingly reflexive rejection of our motions,” he argued.

Sivarasa takes heart from the way the trial of his leader, Anwar Ibrahim, proceded to its culmination in his acquittal in Sodomy II.

He reflected that if Anwar had allowed himself to be discouraged by the constant rejections to his various applications in the course of his trial, things would not have conduced to the point where the judge yielded to the force of the lacunae in the evidentiary record that posited Anwar’s guilt.

“Due process in that instance, vigorously applied for by the defendant, played a signal part in conducing to an acquittal for the accused,” argued the Oxford graduate.

“Likewise the due process of democracy, relentlessly applied for by Parliament’s opposition MPs, has be relied on, even in face of serial rejections and disappointments, to bring our democracy to the best case scenario that the prime minister has set as a goal,” he asserted.

Citing Goethe, the Rhodes scholar concluded: “Salvation is for those who never cease to strive.”

Note: Sivarasa’s emergency motion was rejected this morning.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.

 

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