Dina Brizuela Cooper wants to bring her case before the Malaysian public for them to judge ([#1] Sultan fathered illegitimate daughter [/#], March 2). This was her avowed intention in her letter(s) to your senior reporter, K Kabilan.

Here is just one assessment, formed after accessing her website and reading the documents posted therein.

Dina's allegation that the relationship was "non-consensual" is not entirely plausible. The credibility of her assertions is compromised by the following facts stated in or deduced from her statutory declaration:

Firstly, (as pointed out by another letter writer in [#2] Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned [/#], March 2), no attempt was made by her to flee the country both before and after the first "forced" encounter allegedly under gunpoint; instead, after that incident, she even consigned her passport to the sultan's aides.

Secondly, after discovery of her pregnancy, her exit from the country to Singapore was facilitated. Instead of blowing her story in Singapore (since the police here would not record her statement), she applied for a visa from Singapore to re-enter the country to negotiate financial terms with the sultan in respect of his paternal responsibilities.

Thirdly, her refusal to abort a child conceived from rape might be attributable to her religious principles, but it was also consistent with the intent to nurture and use the child as a bargaining chip.

Fourthly, we are not told under what circumstances a common acquaintance in Manila would deem it appropriate to introduce Dina, a nurse, to George Devan, who according to her moved within top brass of Malaysian political society, that may throw further light on the association between Dina and the sultan.

The sultan's initial shirking of responsibility and refusal to acknowledge Dina's predicament (until many years and such time she applied pressure through third parties) were understandable and instinctive against a person whose personality evinced a potential to harm his legacy, monarchy, repute and position. He just wanted to cut and to cut clean.

Nonetheless, any assessment of Dina's capacity to inflict potential harm was vindicated by subsequent events.

The pressure that was brought to bear on the sultan to secure his formal recognition of Carla was unremitting.

Dina sent letters and pictures of Carla to the members of the sultan's family. She lobbied her case with the Malaysian ambassador in Washington, failing which she lobbied Scott Wildman, a state legislator from California who threatened summoning support of US senators, then President Bill Clinton, the State Department and every conceivable state agency to fight her cause. She brought her cause to the chief mufti of Pahang in July 1999 and even the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in August 1999.

Yet she claimed that the protection of the sultan's dignity and privacy was (until he reneged all his responsibilities) her first concern. Her actions, however, were more consistent with exerting pressure (through disclosure) on someone of position who is adverse to negative publicity.

Now she has created a website and used the Internet to publicise the unfortunate episode to the entire world with the intent of embarrassing the sultan. She even kept file copies of all relevant correspondences, including privileged communication between solicitors, for use on the Internet at the opportune time. The advent of Internet has served her cause.

Based on the correspondences of both parties' respective solicitors, the sultan offered a Los Angeles residential property to both mother and daughter. The sultan offered Dina a gift of US$100,000 and Carla, US$50,000 per year for six years' maintenance, support and educational expenses.

He agreed to underwrite Carla's annual holiday and personal visits (until she was 30 years of age), and was prepared to incur a penalty of US$25,000, if he failed to share time with her. I understand the settlement was worth in aggregate a sum approximating RM10 million. Some of these commitments were to be backed by HSBC bank guarantees.

The sultan was prepared to recompense her and privately acknowledge paternity on conditions of confidentiality but not public and official legitimacy of Carla's equal status with his other children.

No settlement was reached because of Dina's insistence of the condition to any settlement that the sultan first acknowledge paternity in writing, and accept Carla as one of his children and to be accorded equal treatment.

Now is that a reasonable condition in the light of the sultan's status and Carla's illegitimate status?

Although Dina justifies such a condition on the grounds of paternal recognition, love and respect to which Carla as a biological daughter equally deserves, no compromise has been made by Dina to bridge or accommodate the sultan's extraordinary position and circumstances in relation to such a demand and its implications as regards his inheritance.

A condition requiring equal treatment of Carla as the sultan's other children (hammered out in writing) might imply a moral or legal inference that she is entitled to an equal share of the sultan's inheritance as his other children.

Dina's argument that Carla deserves paternal recognition in this respect, the lack of which will traumatise her psychological well-being, may tug at the heart-strings but hardly appeals to the dictates of the head.

It is a flawed argument, and one contrary to both civil and Syariah law, that the legitimate and the illegitimate should be treated equally especially in matters of inheritance.

When confronted with the contention that Syariah law would not recognise an illegitimate child, Dina even demanded funding from the sultan for legal research on the daughter's claim to inheritance, which the sultan could not accede to.

Her aforegoing, self-righteous assertions that money is not the issue is, to my mind, so pretentious that it imposes even on the nave.

If money isn't the main issue, which mother who truly cares for the welfare of the daughter would:

1) totally ignore the limitations of the sultan's circumstances, and go for broke of either getting a cut of the inheritance or nothing at all, not even the lesser offers of financial educational assistance and maintenance plus a residence amounting to RM10 million?

2) try force a father/daughter relationship by a legal agreement and once that agreement cannot be reached, incite acrimonious relations that are an anathema to all future evolution of that biological relationship?

3) since birth, brainwash Carla's mind against the biological father, and now publicise the acrimonious domestic relations on the Internet to tarnish his standing globally what good does it do to the biological daughter?

I am sure it would give Dina satisfaction, given her state of mind and emotions well expressed in her letter of March 2, 2000, to Sultanah Kalsum.

In that letter, she described how she would be his "nightmare" and how he would have "no peace of mind for the rest of his life" when she was "becoming increasingly unpredictable and the Tuanku would not be able to sleep soundly at night knowing I am out there" to threaten "his legacy and dignity of the last 25 years".

The language above speaks of a state of mind of a very vengeful person who will go to the ends of the earth, no matter the odds and how long it will take, to make sure the other side gets, what she perceives, his just deserts.

Her condition requiring equal treatment of Carla as the sultan's other children that stalls all further negotiations is in my opinion unreasonable in the light of the sultan's circumstances.

If she ever thinks that our sultans have each an inheritance of the value as that of the Sultan of Brunei, she would again be nave and wrong. By her series of actions, she has evinced neither respect for nor understanding of the constitutional position of our rulers or the law, be it civil or Syariah.

By conduct, Dina has forfeited much of the sympathy to which she claims she is entitled. I am more sympathetic to the daughter who has been manipulated all her life to serve the mother's campaign against her father - and also the father who must have endured mental and emotional anguish all these years under constant threats of exposure in respect to which all attempts at a rational settlement have been thwarted by an unreasonable condition.

She has proven to be the bane of his existence. That he should ever have had any a relationship with her in the first place that accidentally led to a child being conceived is his really bad luck.