Did former Sabah chief minister Osu Sukam's gambling habit affect his public duties? This is the question DAP wants answered.

Failure to answer this, cautioned its secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, will raise doubts on the impartiality and responsibility of the decisions taken by Osu when he was in office.

"The public has a right to know whether the gambling debts influenced his decision-making as chief minister or accumulated extraordinary wealth," he said in a statement today.

Osu, who was appointed Sabah chief minister from 1999 to 2001, raked up a gambling debt amounting to over RM7 million.

On Tuesday, Kota Kinabalu High Court Judge Ian Chin dismissed the application from Ritz Hotel Casino Ltd and RHC Ltd from United Kingdom to register the judgement obtained against Osu in an English High Court on grounds that it was against public policy.

The application to have the judgement registered as a judgement of the High Court in Sabah and Sarawak was made according to the Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgement Act 1958.

The counsel for both casinos in Kuala Lumpur said yesterday that he was waiting for further instructions from his clients on whether to appeal against the decision.

"We have not received any instructions. They have till Aug 5 to decide whether or not to appeal," said the instructing solicitor, Rueben Mathiavaranam, when contacted today.

Casinos acted unfairly

In his judgment , Chin said: "What is offensive and totally unfair is for the casino to allow someone to gamble on credit in order to make him lose not only his pants but the livelihood of his wife and children as in this case.

"It may be forgivable that the casino is able to entice someone to enter the casino and lose everything that he has on his body but not otherwise, for the reasons I mentioned earlier," he added.

He also pointed out that Muslims in Malaysia were prohibited from patronising casinos and other gambling outlets. He added that gambling was allowed under licence in Malaysia to prevent it from being run by the underworld, and not because it was something good.

"The world would be a much nicer place if no country would allow the recovery of a judgement for a gambling debt which debt was the result, invariably, of the debtor being enticed to gamble on credit and beyond his means," he said.

On the contrary, Chin suggested that a law be enacted to allow a gambler to sue a casino for enticing the gambler.

'Shameful' action

Meanwhile, the DAP secretary-general said Osu's action had 'shamed the country and Barisan Nasional'.

He also called on the Anti-Corruption Agency to probe the matter in order to uphold Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's battle against graft.

Abdullah had also expressed sadness over the matter and criticised Osu for failing as a leader.

According to a Bernama report today, he said a leader should show good moral values and qualities which could be emulated.

He added that a leader must not be involved in activities which were immoral and prohibited by the religion and those which could tarnish his image and credibility.

Abdullah, who is also Umno president, said Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman would discuss with Sabah Umno on Osu's position.