As citizens, we find it absolutely disgusting to be of the realisation that we live in a country which had well-established forms of institutions which were developed and established by our colonial masters, and handed over to our government, after independence, which institutions are now being used to serve some form of political interest.
The institutions in particular are the judiciary and the police force. In this letter, the main focus would be on the administration of justice.
It has been published by the media, that the Court of Appeal has since handing down its decision on May 22, has to date not formulated its judgment. In making its decision to declare Zambry Abdul Kadir as the rightful menteri besar of Perak, the judge assured Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin’s lawyers that the ‘written’ judgment would be delivered within a week.
Why has the Palace of Justice not written the judgment till to date?
The answer could be that they did an injustice by declaring Zambry as the rightful menteri besar or they are now caught in a cobweb of their own making in that they now realise that they did not do justice as provided for in the ‘supreme law’ of the land, that is the federal constitution.
It is clear and apparent that the judges of the Court of Appeal, in Nizar’s case, have by their decision, committed a grievous act of misconduct and further, have clearly demonstrated to the world their incompetence and their lack of knowledge in the sphere of constitutional law.
Or having the knowledge, they have demonstrated their intellectual dishonesty in arriving at a decision which is obviously wrong, or is baseless and without any foundation in law or in equity or on the basis of well established constitutional conventions.
The time honoured principle is that, ‘justice is blind’. However the judges of the Court of Appeal who decided, that Zambry is the rightful MB were not ‘blind’ and that could be the reason as to why they are having such a great deal of difficulty in writing a judgment of ‘divine prescience and perfect clarity’ to justify their reasons for setting aside the grounds of judgment which was handed down by Justice Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim of the High Court of Kuala Lumpur.
Now, let a call a spade a spade. We do not need a rocket scientist to explain to lawyers the principles that govern the grant of a ‘declaration’ in the Nizar vs Zambry case. The declaration granted by Justice Abdul Aziz cannot be appealed upon.
The study of ‘the development of the law’ is a discipline which in itself is a science. In this science, a lawyer learns to think on his feet, so goes the expression. So, if the common man on the street is now openly saying, ‘Ini hakim sumar suda kena beli’ or ‘Dia sumar bodek kerjaan’ what does it connote?
The answer is pure and simple and that is the Court of Appeal judges have been intellectually dishonest in Nizar’s Case.
But then even before this case, the Federal Court judges have also been intellectually dishonest. NH Chan, a former Court of Appeal judge, has in his book, ‘How to judge the judges’ Second Edition, stated:
‘Therefore, under no circumstances must we, in this country and for the sake of the nation, have judges who are interested in the pursuit of power. As Lord Nolan has put it, ‘judges are not interested in the pursuit of power. If they were, they would not have become judges’.
So if the Court of Appeal judges in Nizar’s case were not in the pursuit of power, then how and on what basis of the principles of constitutional law did they decide that the declaration that Nizar is the rightful MB should be set aside.
Having had acted with certainty, why are the judges taking so much time in delivering the written grounds of their judgment? Maybe some retired old English judge is writing the grounds of their judgment as we follow the Westminster model as being the basis of the operation of our constitutional structure.
But then that old judge has a problem as the law in England has matured since 1066 and by convention it has been ‘established’ that the crown must act on the advice of the prime minister. This could be the predicament faced by the judges at the Palace of Justice. Maybe, it is like the story of the ostrich.
Be that as it may, there is a lesson to be learnt, when one acts with ‘certainty’. That is why Bertrand Russell once remarked, ‘One’s certainty varies inversely with one’s knowledge’.
This may be the result of giving recognition to mediocrity. There are also a host of other factors that are at play, which cannot be dealt with here.
But whatever the factors that may be at play, the people of Perak in particular and the nation in general, will not under any circumstance tolerate justice being manipulated at the whims and fancies of the Palace of Justice.