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Panel fails to get a single report after three weeks

Thursday, 18 October 2007 08:14am

©The Star (Used by permission)
by Cecil Fung

KUALA LUMPUR: No one has come forward to give information on the video clip featuring a senior lawyer allegedly brokering the appointment of judges.

Three weeks have passed since the Government set up an independent panel to verify the authenticity of the video clip.

Panel chairman Tan Sri Haidar Mohd Noor said that until yesterday, the panel’s secretariat – the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department – had yet to report to him.

“I take it that nobody has come forward. If anybody had come forward, I’m sure the secretariat would have alerted me,” he told The Star.

The panel was set up on Sept 27 after the video clip was made public on Sept 19.

The 30-working day deadline given by the Government to investigate the video clip’s authenticity and submit a report ends on Nov 8.

Haidar said the Anti-Corruption Agency would be meeting the panel later this month for the ACA to give its report on the authenticity of the video clip.

This meeting, he said, was initially scheduled for yesterday but as the ACA was not ready, it was rescheduled to Oct 29 to give the agency’s experts more time to study the video.

The former Chief Judge of Malaya maintained that the role of the panel was only limited to determining the video clip’s authenticity.

He said currently, the panel could only hear the findings of the ACA because no other party had come forward with information.

“People have the impression that we just swallow whatever that is given to us.

“I can’t pre-empt what’s going to happen. Let’s see first whether we are happy or not (with the ACA’s findings).

“Let’s go step by step,” he said, adding that the panel would only be able to decide on its next course of action after the meeting with the ACA.

He said the panel, which also includes former Court of Appeal judge Datuk Mahadev Shanker and National Service Council chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, might seek a third party’s opinion.

In a statement, Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang lamented that the panel had not made any progress after three weeks.

He called on the panel members to resign and for a royal commission of inquiry be set up instead.

So far, the ACA has recorded statements from several people, including a prominent lawyer, a business tycoon and Parti Keadilan Rakyat de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

PKR vice-president Sivarasa Rasiah and Anwar’s personal assistant Sim Tze Tzin, who lodged a report with the ACA on the matter, are standing firm by their decision not to disclose the identity of the source of the video clip.

The video clip is 14 minutes and 16 seconds long but PKR edited it to 8 minutes and 26 seconds before releasing it, to protect the identity of the source.

The ACA issued a statement saying the video clip supplied to the agency was not the original copy. The agency urged anyone with an original copy to hand it over to facilitate investigations.