Congratulations to the Malaysian Bar Council for rising to the occasion in the face of naked assault on our judicial system as highlighted by the explosive video clip that exposes evil political manipulation of the judiciary.

The council has called on the government to immediately set up a royal commission of inquiry to get to the bottom of the depraved state of our judicial system.

And to demonstrate the Bar's resolve, it has unprecedentedly called on members to march from the Palace of Justice to the Prime Minister's Department in Putrajaya to deliver the memorandum of request to the cabinet on Sept 26.

It is indeed heartening to see the Malaysian Bar living up to its role as vanguard in the defence of judicial integrity.

Let this be the start of a determined nationwide movement to cleanse our judiciary of entrenched political manipulation.

The video clip

The eight-minute video clip exposed by Anwar Ibrahim on Sept 19, capturing lawyer VK Lingam in a telephone conversation with Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim in 2002, is amazingly illustrative of the devilish practice that has corrupted the Malaysian judiciary for the past two decades. (Ahmad Fairuz was then Chief Judge of Malaya, No 3 in judiciary).

The Lingam video reveals how the prime minister decides on senior judicial positions not by consultation with the judicial fraternity but by listening to "whispers" by close business and political cronies, who function as agents for the prime minister's personal financial and political interests (words in inverted comas in this article are the exact words used by Lingam in the video clip conversation).

It also confirms that the criteria of selection is not based on judicial merits but on political and personal allegiance to the prime minister.

Persons on the preference list are termed by Lingam as "key players" and "soldiers". Judges favoured by the then independent-minded Chief Justice Dzaiddin Abdullah who often defied the PM's wishes are classified as in "the other camp".

Judges loyal to the prime minister including "Eusoff Chin, Ahmad Fairuz" are said to have "fought for" the cause. Fairuz was even praised for giving "110% loyalty".

In the telephone conversation, Lingam and Fairuz were discussing the strategy to outsmart Dzaiddin so that more judges loyal to the prime minister could be placed in key positions.

Fairuz must have impressed on Lingam that central to this strategy was the prompt promotion of Fairuz himself to higher position and pressed Lingam to help out.

Lingam repeatedly assured Fairuz that he had been working hard on this, and Lingam even described how he managed to get Fairuz the Chief Judge of Malaya job through "brainwashing" Vincent Tan (then Prime Minister Mahathir's business crony) into convincing Mahathir to give the job to Fairuz. (Fairuz was appointed CJM in late 2001).

Lingam also promised Fairuz that he would ask Vincent Tan to remind the PM to bestow a Tan Sri ship to Fairuz so as to "elevate" the latter's position.

Lingam ended the conversation with assurance to Fairuz that he would pursue hard on Fairuz's promotion and would arrange for Fairuz to meet Vincent Tan and Tenku Adnan (a minister and a political crony to Mahathir) confidentially, prior to a meeting with the PM.

As it turned out, Fairuz was made a Tan Sri in June 2002, promoted as President of the Court of Appeal (No 2 in judiciary) in December 2002, and eventually as Chief Justice in March 2003.

Public fury

Despite the common knowledge that Malaysian judiciary has been under political manipulation for many years, nevertheless, the revelation of the video clip caused a firestorm of fury and protests.

This is akin to a wife being shown a snapshot of the long suspected unfaithful husband caught with his pants down. Though the revelation is not new, its electrifying effect is still the same enough to cause the wife to blow up in a state of frenzy.

It is encouraging to note that Malaysian society across the board, safe the ruling coalition, reacted instantly with indignation and a determined spirit that this hideous mutilation of our judiciary must be halted.

All opposition parties, the Bar Council, numerous NGOs and individuals have voiced their anger and demanded the immediate setting up of an independent commission of enquiry to probe into the revelation of the video clip, with a view to seek long term solution to our much battered judiciary, in addition to meting out punishment to the culprits.

While the nation is at boiling point, where are the culprits Lingam and Fairuz?

A week has lapsed since the revelation, they are still no where to be seen. There has been no open denial of their role in this shameful episode.

Meanwhile, top guns of the establishment PM, DPM, Minister in charge of law, and even the Attorney-General seem to be pursuing the same well trodden path of smothering the fire set off by a high-level scandal. Their objective may be the same, but their tactics vary. Worthy of mention are those of the AG and the PM.

The strangest is from the AG who, as top law officer of the government, incredibly thinks that there is nothing wrong with the substance revealed by the tape.

The saddest is from the PM, who seems to aim his gun at the whistle-blower, instead of the culprits. The most repulsive part of his statement is his claim that "the video was released with the aim of getting the people angry with the country's judiciary system" and his warning that "those who released the video, as well as those who lodged ACA reports" would be punished, if the video was found to be not true ( The Sun , Sept 21).

To these leaders indulging in the denial syndrome to deceive the nation, let me ask this common sense question. If you are the alleged culprit, and the video is a fake, wouldn't you have jumped up to declare your innocence in the first instance and reported the fraud to the police so as to nail the forgers?

Being most knowledgeable of the law, the Chief Justice should not only do this for his own personal interest, but he is in fact absolutely duty-bound to do so, so as to defend the good name of the judiciary.

Hence, instead of threatening the whistle blower, wouldn't it be more appropriate for the PM to get the principals of the scandal to publicly declare their straightforward answers and to follow this up with an independent enquiry?

Strategy of action

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi flatly rejected the notion of an independent inquiry during a press conference on Sept 21; instead, he asked the police to investigate the case, starting with determining the authenticity of the tape.

We know only too well what this will lead to, as we are very familiar with the government's modus operandi in dealing with scandals involving top officials in the ruling clique (the Chief Justice is undeniably one, according to the tape) investigation by either police or the Anti-Corruption Agency, then long delay until public interests have waned, and eventually the Attorney-General emerges to declare case closed due to inconclusive evidence.

Knowing Abdullah's style of leadership, the Bar Council must brace itself to a disappointing response (or rather non-response) from Abdullah on the memorandum to be presented on Sept 26, and plan for alternative strategies to push the agenda ahead.

A silver lining in the cloud is our King, who is empowered under the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1950 (Revised 1973) to appoint a commission to inquire into any public matter as he deems fit to uphold public interests.

In this connection, the people are encouraged by the righteous utterances of royalties in recent days and are confident that the King, with the backing of his fellow rulers, will not hesitate to exercise his constitutional power to protect the rights and interests of the people when the occasion so arises.

The Malaysian Bar as primary defenders of law, political parties, NGOs and the civil society at large should therefore seize this opportunity to forge concerted efforts in appealing to the King, as well as in organising other mass movements that would place the nation on-course to restoration of integrity in the judicial system.

Meanwhile, we should realise the serious constraints to spreading public awareness of the perils to our nation caused by a maimed judiciary, as the ruling BN still exercises complete stranglehold on the local press and TV channels.

As of now, none of these has identified the culprits in the video clip or publicised Bar Council's proposed march from the Palace of Justice to the PM's Department on Mar 26.

It therefore falls upon the shoulders of those already enlightened through organized bodies and the Internet to work doubly hard towards achieving our aims.

For a start, let us together make the proposed march on 26th a momentous event one that is fitting to usher in a new era of judicial reforms.