COMMENT The Federal Court sits at the summit of our judicial system, but it appears the survey that elevation affords it does not confer panache at arriving at decisions.

Like a pilot, it is apt to miss the runway of justice from the presence of cataracts in its vision and the narrowness of its concentration on the plumbing aspects of the law, rather than on the more vital philosophic conceptions on which the rule of law is founded.

Our appellate courts should abjure the plumber's mentality, for it subtracts from the law's ultimate aim of philosophic striving for justice.

NONE The apex court's unanimous decision yesterday to allow private law practitioner Muhammad Shafee Abdullah ( left ) to lead the prosecution in the appeal of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy acquittal by the High Court was arrived via what can reasonably be called a sleepwalker's insulation from impinging realities.

Senior lawyer Shafee, given the public record of his advocacy for Umno, cannot be the disinterested counsel that the Attorney-General's Chambers could sublet its prosecutorial role in the appeal of Anwar's acquittal, confident that the disinterested interestedness in the pursuit of justice that the role requires would be assayed with a professional's panache by Shafee.

Shafee is not apolitical despite his avowal that he has never been a member of any political party.

He has been traipsing on the edges of the political arena rather like the lawyer Vernon Jordan, famous chum of former US President Bill Clinton, who gained notoriety from justice-evading advice he allegedly gave a White House intern in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal that rocked Clinton's tenure in late 1990s.

Even a former attorney-general, Abu Talib Othman, has gone on record to air his reservations about the AG's Chambers privatisation to Shafee of its prosecutorial role in the Anwar acquittal.

lingam tape panel meeting 031007 abdul gani patail This was even before the news arrived recently in the public domain that the schmoozer role that Shafee sometimes plays for the powers-that-be saw him involved him in a meeting last August with former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad that, according to Mat Zain Ibrahim , one of the participants at the ensuing palaver, was focused on matters to do with possible misconduct by attorney-general Gani Patail ( right ).

When one weighs the fact that it was Gani who signed on July 2 Shafee's letter appointment as lead prosecutor in the appeal of Anwar's sodomy acquittal, and place that against the focus of the meeting that had gathered Shafee, Mat Zain and another interested party with Mahathir, one can infer something about the entangled state of Shafee's gyrations.

An exchange of SMS messages

Also on public record is the uncontested text messages conversation he had with then deputy prime minister Najib Razak when the DPM's aide, Abdul Razak Baginda, was being arraigned for the murder of the Mongolian girl, Altantuya Shaariibuu, an unsolved puzzle that has become the most notorious crime mystery in a generation.

Shafee was also present at a meeting in the middle of 2008 between Najib and Anwar's accuser, Saiful Bhukari Azlan, which led to Anwar's second trial for sodomy.

This fact was adduced in the arguments by the Anwar defence against the propriety of having Shafee as lead prosecutor.

NONE However, both a Court of Appeal panel of judges and now a Federal Court panel found that in Shafee not having being called as a material witness in the High Court trial of Anwar ( right ), his presence at the meeting offers no trammel to impartial execution of his prosecuting role in the AG's appeal of the acquittal.

If the hallowed maxim that justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done is pertinent in this case, it must be said it is being honoured in the breach than in the observance.

By dint of his advocacy in cases involving clients linked to Umno, by the role he at times plays as schmoozer to the powers-that-be, and by his traipsing on the periphery of arenas in which political operatives ply their trade, Shafee cannot be considered a disinterested party in the prosecution of the government's appeal against Anwar's acquittal on sodomy.

The rule of law and its concomitant pursuit of justice are matters of grave import that our appellate courts have dealt with in cavalier fashion on the specific issue of the fitness of private practitioner Shafee for the role of lead prosecutor.

That conduct will be repudiated by judicial panels that in some future may want to redeem the contortions that our judiciary has undergone in recent decades, convulsions that have redounded to the severe detriment of the rule of law and its philosophic striving for justice.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it keeps him in touch with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.