All the frenzy sparked by election judge Datuk Muhammad Kamil Awang's disclosure that he received a telephone call from his senior instructing him to strike off the petitions challenging the 1999 Likas state elections result, has indeed created more turbulence than I anticipated.

We have him writing down the name of the caller and passed on to the Chief Justice Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah. We have the police lodging their own reports in order for them to commence investigations.

We have denials from the three possible suspect judges and chief justices. We have the de facto Law Minister Rais Yatim requiring to see evidence and cautioning that evidence would be hard to find in this case.

We have Mahathir reminding us of the independence of the judiciary de-linking himself and the executive from the sins of the judiciary. And we have all the English-language government-controlled and government-supporting newspapers competing amongst one another to show who can reveal more of the sordid details of what's going on... I should say that I am impressed that for once they seem to be even beating malaysiakini in some detail and news.

Rais Yatim contemplates that because establishing with certainty who the caller was if the call was not recorded, the question of evidence would be a technical problem.

I am not a lawyer nor a law student, but aren't the standards for evidence guided by the law of evidence, where precedence plays an important part?

And aren't the courts and the police too, guided by these standards that are set and are not repudiated?

I am of course referring to the standards that were set by justice Ariffin Jaka when he found Anwar Ibrahim guilty of sodomy, having satisfied himself that he could rely on just the testimony and affidavit of one Azizan Abu Bakar.

He found his comfort in arriving at the guilty decision purely on the point that Azizan had more to lose from coming forward with his accusation than to gain from it.

That being the standard of evidence that was last set and continues to be sanctified by the courts, the present situation should therefore, also be acted based on those standards.

Firstly, I would imagine that in making the allegation the way he did, Muhammad Kamil Awang has more to lose than to gain from having made it. After all, his career is coming to an end and he has a nice pension waiting for him, he does not need to jeapordise it and he does not need this attention at this time.

Just as Ariffin Jaka and the courts continue to accept a situation where uncorroborated testimonies and affidavits are admissible, I cannot see why the need for corroboration of Mohammad Kamil's allegations.

Surely a High Court judges' allegations from the bench should carry greater weight then Azizan's uncorroborated affidavit.

Any need for corroboration of the judge's allegations would indeed be an insult to all judges in this country as it would appear that a driver's uncorroborated affidavit would indeed be of greater authority.

Secondly, should not the police's investigation be confined to establishing if Mohammad Kamil's has got more to gain or more to lose from having included that recorded allegation in a judgment he made?

Eusoff Chin appears to require evidence. But was it not that it was in his term of office as chief justice that the new standard required in terms of evidence was set? Should that same standard not apply even to him, assuming he is the accused in this case?

And since Ariffin Jaka set this new principle, would it not be appropriate for him to now sit in judgment of this matter? Let us see him making a contradictory judgment.

After all it is possible to limit Mohammad Kamil's allegations to the same elements that was contained in Azizan Abu Bakar's affidavit and Mohammad Kamil can be graciously given any period of up to two years to cite the time of the call!

If justice has to be done and seen to be done then it would only be fair that the principles applied to incarcerate Anwar Ibrahim be also applied here.