With greatest respect to your column writer MGG Pillai, the premises and conclusions of his article [#1] Mahathir deserves immunity [/#] (April 2) are non sequitur and unfair.

The writer had grouped the constitutional amendments of 1984 removing the rulers' immunity from prosecution with the recent mega awards for defamation suits meted out by the courts as being under the common category of 'institutional checks and balances', the removal of which subsequently boomeranged against Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the government because, according to the writer, if the rulers are denied immunity, it is difficult for him (the PM) to have it; and further ordinary men or women in the street could now obtain RM100 million and more in defamation damages from government-controlled bodies, like television stations.

The writer tries to show irony here as if the tyranny of power begets and reaps in due course the tyranny of the consequences boomeranged. Hello, are there words of wisdom here that I missed?

In the first place, the removal of the rulers' immunity from prosecution is not synonymous with removal of checks and balances. Rulers, the prime minister and even judges still enjoy immunity in the execution of their official constitutional and public acts because, as stated by the writer, "it is important its heads of state and government not look over their shoulders (if I may add, in fear of personal consequences) before acting in the national interest".

The writer has failed to distinguish immunity for official acts from personal/private acts of rulers and heads of government. The latter category of private acts outside official duties does not enjoy immunity as the case should be because, as the writer could agree, nobody is or ought to be above the law and accorded immunity from prosecution of criminal acts perpetrated in private/personal capacities.

Secondly, the awarding of mega awards in defamation suits by the courts is by itself merely reflective of the extreme severity of courts' judgments with which the writer is entitled not to agree that the awards are just or reasonable. It however cannot be viewed as a removal of checks and balances unless the writer is taken to have extrapolated this phenomenon as evincing the independence of judiciary manacled.

For such an extrapolation, the writer has to be taken to imply that the judiciary was biased to give such mega awards in favour of persons close to the corridors of power.

As no evidence or arguments have been given by the writer in his article to support this implied assertion, I must assume that he had meant the defamation case against him to be such an example of which he expected us all to know. This kind of indirect suggestion without supporting facts cannot prove the point he makes. It is only self-serving to promote his own case (whether with or without justification). But his case is not the subject of focus in the article.

Yes, it is an article replete with innuendoes, that is, indirect suggestions about something others have done and trying to convince the readers that it is true without at the same time providing them any example, fact or evidence or context. This is highly unfair to those to whom the innuendoes are directed.

The writer praised the PM for his record and concluded that he was entitled immunity. The whole magnanimous suggestion on the writer's part is based on the implicit premise that the PM has to account for some wrongdoings upon which the issue of immunity then arises.

The writer made allusions to Suharto and Estrada when he said that he was "against it then, as I am now of moves to make him accountable for acts of omission and commission, as what happened to Suharto of Indonesia and Estrada of the Philippines".

This is a classic piece of innuendo in bad taste. It suggests and seeks to convince readers a priori without offering supporting facts. Although the writer's remarks are couched in magnanimous tones, the magnanimity was but a cloak beneath which sheathed the knife to attack the person to whom they were directed by baseless comparisons, unfair insinuations and innuendoes.

The article began by mocking how the PM's popularity was stagemanaged in his visit to Gombak last week by paying students' attendance. I just don't understand how the issue of the PM's popularity or lack thereof on the ground can be an excuse for, or has anything to do with and leads to the writer's subsequent polemics on the issue of, immunity as he looked beyond convulsions of the moment to the broader spaces of the nation's political horizons.

I would have the writer know that allusions to the politics of Indonesia and Philippines are entirely misplaced. Suharto and Estrada were ousted by street demonstrations of students, factory workers, labourers, office workers and housewives.

Yes, this is democracy - of the mob kind because theoretically, 300,000 street demonstrators can remove the lawfully constituted leader and government democratically elected in by 30 million! Thankfully, this has not happened here yet.

We pride ourselves in a higher notch of democracy based on constitutional rules. It may be alleged that the ruling party punches below the belt. But still there are rules which we all abide by.

Whilst we uphold our freedom of speech, the writer should remember that (whatever his private thoughts) it does not give him the licence to publicly put down any person by innuendoes and unfair tricks of suggestions (without specific allegations supported by evidence and facts) under the cloak of magnanimity.