Now that the Lingam tape royal commission hearing is over, the Malaysian public is waiting to see the recommendations that the royal commission will be putting up to the King. This may be historic, as said by commission member Mahadev Shanker, but Malaysians would like to see if this is truly a royal commission that will clean up the judiciary or if it is a mere white wash.

The commission’s terms of references are only with regards to the ‘fixing’ of judicial appointments and the commission has made a ruling that they cannot look also at ‘case-fixing’. This really is a joke. What is the point of fixing judicial appointment if the ultimate aim is not to fix cases? As much as they tried to sidestep this issue, case-fixing came out, eventually, through the evidence of Thirumana Karasu and G Jayanti.

It was stated that VK Lingam’s secretary typed an alleged judgement until 3 am in the morning and that the floppy disk that contained the judgement was delivered to Justice Mokhtar Sidin. Well, in defense, Mokhtar Sidin will probably say that the fact that his final judgement appears identical to the one typed by Lingam is coincidental.

I pause here to think about the whole episode. Sure, tycoon Vincent Tan - who is party to the defamation suit mentioned in the hearing - may not have claimed the RM10 million in damages awarded to him against journalist MGG Pillai . According to him, it was ‘a bad investment’. I beg to differ.

Tan knew for a fact that the defendants did not have RM10 million to pay him from the word go. What I believe he wanted to do is send a message to all Malaysians to not trifle with him. His ‘gunslinger’ would come after you. We know how ‘fast’ VK Lingam is and now we know the sheriff was also helping him to shoot down the innocent.

Vincent Tan’s Berjaya Group may be worth RM3.409 billion - that makes him one of the 10 richest people in Malaysia. With all that money, he can never erase the memory of all the Malaysians impacted by what he did in that defamation case.

All MGG Pillai did was to speak the truth. Vincent Tan will eventually reap what he has sowed. The question now is when.