It was unfortunate for ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim to have appeared before High Court judge S Augustine Paul who denied his bail application, a decision which is inconsistent to the regular procedure of bail applications.

Senior lawyer Manjeet Singh Dhillon said that it was a tremendous misfortune that Anwar had appeared before Paul who has been known to have made many inconsistent decisions and rulings when handling different cases.

"It was just unlucky for him to appeal before Justice Paul. That's all. It's just bad luck," he said when responding to a question by another senior lawyer Raja Aziz Addruse .

Raja Aziz had posed a question relating to Paul's decision in granting bail to criminal accused to the panelist who spoke on "Recent Cases In the Criminal Justice System: Is Consistency a Virtue" at the Bar Council's colloquium yesterday.

The colloquium entitled "Current Judicial Trends and the Rule of Justice" was organised by the council following the massive dissatisfaction against the recent controversial decisions including the Federal Court ruling dismissing Anwar's appeal against his corruption conviction.

Raja Aziz had asked one of the panelist lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah whether it was the arbitrary discretion of a judge in granting bail to an accused.

Balwant Singh's case

The question was in reference to Shafee's statement that Paul had been inventive in his landmark decision to allow bail to murder accused Balwant Singh and that the judge had been very bold to act on a newspaper report to state that the accused may have acted in self-defence.

Earlier Shafee said that Paul's decision to grant bail was consistent to the criminal law and that it was the prosecution who had acted inconsistently when they opposed bail.

"Non-bailable does not mean that the accused shall not be allowed bail. The objective of a bail is to ensure that the accused will attend his trial. The prosecution cannot object if they have no proof that the accused will jump bail," he said.

He added that there was no reason for Paul to deny Balwant bail when there is proof that the accused was old and ill and that he would have no problem in attending his murder trial.

Here, Raja Aziz asked why was then Anwar who face a lesser charge than Balwant was denied bail when there was no doubt that he would attend his trial.

Shafee replied that Paul had considered a different factor which was possibility of witness tampering as Anwar was charged for corrupt practice by abusing his ministerial powers.

"However, ordinarily I agree that no matter how serious the charge is unless it involves a very serious criminal offences bail ought to be granted to the accused," he added.

It was at this point when Manjeet said that Anwar was just unlucky to have appeared before the judge at that time.

No authoritative laws

He was also quick to point out that while Paul had acted on a newspaper report while deliberating Balwant's bail application, the judge had refused to do the same in another case he was hearing in Malacca.

"That's inconsistency. While acting on a paper cutting here, he had refused to do so unless the whole newspaper was brought to court," he said.

In his written presentation on the discussion, Manjeet had said that it was very unlikely for Paul's decision in the Anwar trial (which the judge on April 14, 2000 jailed the ex-deputy premier six months for the offence) will be featured in the criminal law text as authoritative laws.

"They (the rulings) are not good law. Bad cases do not good precedents make. The cases will, naturally, be quoted ad nauseaum in certain Evidence texts but that will not change their quality or worth," he added.