I read Syed Ahmad Idid's interview with some interest although not with the same level of intensity with which I had with the 'petition' as Dato' Syed Idid has (at best) incorrectly described it.
In a true civil society there would be no need to resort to poison pen letters because there would be institutions (political, judicial, media) and effective laws and enforcement to properly, effectively, and justly deal with allegations of abuse of power. All that a complainant need do is lodge the complaint with the proper authorities and they will take care of the rest and the laws and enforcement agencies will provide them with the appropriate protection.
When you have a system, procedures and honest and diligent people facilitating the system, there is no need to make an anonymous complaint which is what a poison pen letter is when you get down to it. This is perhaps why in jurisdictions like England and the US, poison pen letters are not common (they just go to the press).
Although I am not in favour of anonymous postings or letters, if we are honest about the state of affairs in this country, it is not difficult to see why Dato' Syed Idid wrote those anonymous letters. He clearly thought that the former Chief Justice, the eloquent Tun Eusoff Chin (he was glorious during his opening speech at the Commonwealth Law Conference held in Malaysia) was allegedly corrupt along with all his henchmen that Dato' Syed Idid has named in his letter and detailed their instances of corruption and modus operandi. The underlying question behind the letter is this: How do you meaningfully complain about the wanton corruption in your work environment when a lot of your brethren are doing it and are being protected by your boss who happens to be, legally and theoretically, on par with the Prime Minister of our country? He could not lodge a complaint because he felt the rot started at the top and very probably believed that he would be persecuted if he did lodge a formal complaint. Where do you go if you felt the police would not do anything about your complaint, or worse, investigate you for lodging the complaint and finding you guilty of something (ala Anwar Ibrahim)? This is probably how Dato' Syed Idid saw it and out of frustration started writing those letters and circulating them.
But then Dato' Syed Idid was only mediocre at best and that is why I felt he 'went out' the wrong way. He forgot that he was a High Court Judge and was supposed to uphold justice no matter what (Tun Eusoff declared that one remains a judge even after retirement – brilliant!). This is why I say he was wrong in resigning, because instead of meekly resigning and then spending several years in publishing, he should have brought the house down – lodge a police report with the Anti–Corruption Agency and put it on record, get himself sacked, speak to the media (the more foreign the better), dish out incriminating documents. Do something to stop the course of injustice like Tan Sri Wan Sulaiman, Tan Sri Mohamed Azmi, Tan Sri Abdoolcader, Tan Sri Wan Hamzah and Datuk George Seah did when they issued the interlocutory prohibitory order to try and put the breaks on Tun Salleh Abbas' hack tribunal. Some of them took the hit and were dismissed for their actions. But he did nothing.
I would hold a judge to a higher duty to justice than the ordinary citizen simply because a judge is its dispenser. When the fount of justice is tainted, what gushes forth is injustice. They make decisions that have the ability to affect not just its litigants but a great many people that find themselves in a similar predicament. One's duty and responsibility increases in proportion to the power one wields, and judges wield awesome power if you think about it – they can stop the government (although ours are too insipid to do so), order or prevent people/companies from doing this or that, decide on cases worth hundreds of millions of ringgit and even culture (as the holding hands Federal Court decision will bear out).
10 years later he now whines about how he has lost his pension, reputation, etc. The fault falls mostly on his own shoulders. Instead of becoming a poster boy for the fight against corruption, he publishes books which hardly anybody reads. He could have fought the good fight and then write a biography about what went on then and how his fight has been, do the signing tours, get on Oprah (or least, Jerry Springer), come out with an action figure – that would certainly make more interesting reading (and perhaps even an action movie – how many judicial action movies are there anyway? Groundbreaking! Malaysia boleh!)
As to the '100 over wild allegations of corruption and misconduct', let it be said that truth is stranger than fiction and the more I experience, the less able I am not to put anything past anybody, especially those wielding power. We're human and therefore all capable of great good and great evil. So I won't say those allegations are wild because corruption and misconduct are acts of wildness – the fault is in the acts not the allegations. And at present that's all they are – unproven allegations. It does not follow as a matter of course that it necessarily remains untrue. I would bend towards giving Dato' Syed Idid the benefit of the doubt – since he has admitted to the accusations of writing the letter – is it not our custom to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused?
And anyway, most of the judges in bygone days (in Malaysia) and more civilised jurisdictions appoint those who are like Caesar's wife i.e. people with reputations that are so beyond reproach that one would have even trouble manufacturing an allegation against them. You could say that of many of our pre–1988 judges. As an experiment, try to create an allegation of corruption against the likes of Tan Sri Abdoolcader, or Raja Azlan, and you see how pathetic and dishonest it sounds. Those are the kinds of judges that should be sitting on our benches – those above suspicion. Anything less should be off the bench and in the gutter.
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