COMMENT Some imp that prompts intentions to miscarry appears to trouble members of the judicial estate. The latest afflicted by this gremlin is justice Ghazali Cha.

The High Court judge, in deciding the appeal of Batu MP Tian Chua against his lower court conviction for biting a policeman, remarked he intended that the parliamentarian not suffer the loss of his seat even as he declined to overturn a guilty verdict.

So he reduced the appellant’s six-month jail term to two and slashed the fine to RM2,000 from RM3,000.

Justice Ghazali must have been confident those diminutions would see Batu voters not required to go to the polls in what would have been the 11th by-election since the March 2008 general election.

The judge may have discerned the public mood of by-election fatigue right but not the meaning of the particular law on MP disqualification.

For his decision, in the learned opinion of some senior lawyers and at least one retired judge, rendered Tian Chua disqualified from holding the seat.

T azlan he wording of the particular law holds that an MP would be disqualified if he is fined RM2,000 and above for an offence.

Two negatives – “not less than RM,200” – in the wording of the relevant section of the law can addle minds not used to interpreting sentences freighted with double negatives.      

A flurry of speculation has ensued since justice Ghazali handed down his decision last week.

Precedents often ignored

But it was hard to see how Tian Chua could wriggle out of his predicament if his fine of RM2,000 stood.     

It mattered little that not so long ago, in 1974, an opposition MP had been disqualified because he was fined RM2,000 for an offence.

Precedents don’t seem to weigh a lot to some of our judges, otherwise Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin would still be Perak menteri besar.

Established precedents in Nizar’s case held that while rulers could appoint menteris besar, only legislatures could remove them by a vote of no-confidence.

In the ongoing sodomy trial of Anwar Ibrahim, the normative procedure of allowing the defence to scrutinise all reports and documents pertaining to the charge has been set aside.

When legal norms and precedents are ignored so easily, would it be much of a surprise that a not inordinately (a double negative there!) difficult interpretation of language in a particular law would soon pose problems too?

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.