Royal Commissions

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Oleh Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammed

1. The Royal Commission is not a court of law and is not supposed to judge and sentence people. But the fact that such commissions are often manned by judges or ex-judges seems to indicate that principles of justice and determination of right and wrong should be based on legal principles.

2. But clearly the Royal Commission on the Lingam tapes has allowed itself the liberty of stretching legal principles in order possibly to achieve a certain objective.

3. One sentence in the report is very telling and I quote,

“In the process, Dr Mahathir Mohamad was also entangled. That possibility was ominous when examined against the factual circumstances surrounding the rejection of Malek Ahmad as Chief Judge of Malaya. Their ultimate aim or purpose could not be ascertained with exactitude given the limitation under the (Commission) terms of reference. It could be related to the fixing of cases as submitted by counsel for the Bar and others. Certainly it is reasonable to suggest that it could not be anything but self-serving

.”

4. Through these unusual reasoning based on ominous possibility, even though they could not ascertain with exactitude, the Commission concluded that I could be related to the fixing of cases.

5. I am now named as one of those to be investigated by the authorities.

6. I await the investigation which I suspect is possibly intended to incriminate me one way or another.

7. Indeed based on the arguments of the Commission itself I can say that possibly it was set up in order to find something to pin on me, to drag me to court etc and generally humiliate me.

8. Indeed, although I cannot ascertain with exactitude, it may be possible that the Commission members may have been instructed to pin something on me. This is a reasonable suggestion given that for the Prime Minister “it would be self-serving.”

9. This new legal principle that ‘if it is possible then it could have been’ opens a plethora of possibilities. These possibilities should be investigated through Royal Commissions. We would then be able to have further investigations and possibly charge certain people in court. At the very least the Royal Commissions can create doubts regarding the integrity of selected people.

10. For a start I would suggest a Royal Commission to look into the possibilities of lobbying and abuse of position by Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi when he was Deputy Prime Minister as is recorded by the United Nations in which he was listed for being involved in the Oil for Food business with Iraq. He is also on record as abusing his position by lobbying the Iraqi authorities in favour of his sister-in-law. Ministers, Deputy Prime Ministers and Prime Ministers are prohibited from doing business. Letters of recommendation for sisters-in-law clearly constitute lobbying.

11. Another Royal Commission should investigate the merger between ECM-Libra, at that time partly owned by the Prime Minister’s son-in-law and a well-known crony, with a Government Company – Avenue Assets, in which the Prime Minister who is also Finance Minister was possibly responsible for devaluing the price of Avenue Assets and giving ECM-Libra, run by the Prime Minister’s crony, Kalimullah, the management role.

12. A third Royal Commission should look into how the 5% royalty (Wang Ehsan) due to Trengganu was spent. It is possible that the usual procedures for fund allocation and spending were not adhered to. The possibility of corruption when contracts were given should be fully investigated. The Commission can, on the basis of possibility implicate the Prime Minister, the Menteri Besar of Trengganu and the Prime Minister’s son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin, in the misuse and abuse of authority.

13. Now the new Menteri Besar of Terengganu says that the billions spent on the Monsoon Cup, Crystal Mosque etc did not come from “Wang Ehsan” but from Federal funds. Who decided to allocate so much Federal funds to Terengganu which already has some six billion Ringgit in oil royalties unspent.

14. Mere denial by the Prime Minister, the Menteri Besar and the Contractor should not be accepted as it is reasonable to suggest that they could not be anything but self-serving. The possibility here is ominous.

15. There is no need for the Royal Commission to ascertain anything with exactitude. Mere possibilities should suffice for the Royal Commissions to make their recommendations and for full publicity and pictures to be released to the Kalimullah controlled mainstream media. A full investigation by the authorities should then be carried and the innocence proven though not necessarily beyond reasonable doubt.

16. When the Royal Commissions have finished their work, new Royal Commissions should be set up to look into other possibilities of abuses of power by the present Government and all the previous Governments.