Does Mahathir have the moral authority to talk about our judiciary system after he had crushed it?

Reading back, what he did then was really over the top.  

Getting his own party declared illegal, phantom voters, used and slander the Agong, change the constitution, threw more than a hundred people in jail, paralysed the courts systems.  

All because one man wanted to remain president.

Today there was a statement that slammed Tun Mahathir's blog post a few days back and correctly pointing out that it was seditious.

Annuar: Is Mahathir courting a sedition rap?

Tan Sri Annuar Musa has raised the possibility that former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad was deliberately courting a sedition charge by making remarks about the appointment of the Attorney-General, Apandi Ali.

In a statement today, Annuar said it was clear that Dr Mahathir’s blog article on Wednesday had contained “words seditious in nature.” 

Annuar said it could be that Dr Mahathir “being a shrewd political strategist” was trying to mobilise support for his cause to oust Prime Minister Najib Razak by inciting the authorities to act against him and hence garner public sympathy. 

“Having been a Prime Minister for a very long time, Tun Dr Mahathir must have known that those words are seditious in nature, what more when the Federal Government under his stewardship used to very frequently charge people for the same offence,” Annuar said. 

“But it could also be that Tun Dr Mahathir thinks that him being a former Prime Minister and a former Umno President may make him immune from the power of law, hence his boldness in going against the law in his attempt to try to get the PM removed.” 

However, Annuar pointed out that the authorities would have to act if police reports were lodged against Dr Mahathir, lest the government be perceived as being selective.
Annuar charged that Dr Mahathir was laying himself open by his writing about “the improper dismissal of the previous Malaysian AG (Gani Patail) just before he was expected to bring a charge against the PM” and that “the current AG was appointed by the PM through false representation made to the King.” 

He said Mahathir’s claim that Apandi was appointed through false representation made to the King was not only seditious, it was an insult to the King. 

He pointed out that even the usually pro-opposition law experts such as Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar of University of Malaya, and “fiercely independent law experts” such as Emeritus Professor Shad Saleem Faruqi of UiTM were of the opinion that Gani Patail’s dismissal was constitutional, unlike Mahathir’s dismissal of top judges. 

He said Gani had never challenged his dismissal, and the Bar Council had also fully recognised Apandi. 

“It naturally goes that if the previous AG’s dismissal is constitutional then the current AG’s appointment is also constitutional, as simple as that,” Annuar said. 

Annuar turned the spotlight on Dr Mahathir’s past, pointing out that the premier had removed the Lord President of the Federal Court, Tun Salleh Abas, and fellow Federal Court Justices, Wan Suleiman Pawanteh and George Seah, in 1988 in order to save his own position.

Dr Mahathir had no moral standing to preach or complain about the ruining of the Malaysian judicial and legal system, he said. 

“If there’s any fault with the current system, he should blame himself”, Annuar added, saying Mahathir had created and perpetuated the situation.

The last part about Mahathir having no moral standing to comment on this is especially hurtful to Tun Mahathir.

The judicial crisis of 1988 was the single most corrupt and brazen attempt to subvert justice in Malaysia and has forever tainted Malaysia's judiciary system and is a story that deserves repeating - especially to the younger Malaysians who may not be aware of the significance of this event.

Suffice to say that Tun Mahathir subverted our constitution and corrupted our judiciary system just because he wanted to stay in power as UMNO president and Prime Minister.

This story was told by one of the victims himself, the former Lord President Tun Salleh Abbas in his 1989 book:  May Day for Justice: The Lord President's Version 

Here is a a summary of this book:

HOW MAHATHIR DESTROYED THE MALAYSIAN JUDICIARY

1. THE DESTRUCTION OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE

Mahathir was continually upset with the Judiciary because the verdicts in a number of cases went against the Government. According to Deputy  PM, Datuk Musa Hitam, one
of  his favourite slogans was "Hang the Lawyers! Hang the Judges!" From 1987, he intensified his verbal attacks against the Judiciary in the news media, making damaging statements which clearly demonstrated that he did not understand the role of the Judiciary as being independent from the Executive and Legislative arms of Government. 

That the Judiciary exists as a check-and-balance against the excesses of the Executive appeared to have been a concept he never fully grasped. Instead, he accused judges of the sort of political interference that would result in confusion and loss of public confidence in the Government. Hence, to curtail the powers of the Judiciary and subsume it beneath the Executive became one of his cherished dreams.

In April 1987, after an UMNO leadership contest in which Mahathir very nearly lost to Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, there were allegations that several delegates who had voted were drawn from branches not properly registered under the Societies Act 1966. An appeal was filed by eleven UMNO delegates to have the elections declared null and void. This was a very serious matter for Mahathir because if the appeal succeeded, fresh elections would have to be held and he might lose. The matter finally came before Justice Harun Hashim of KL High Court who ruled that under the existing law, he had no choice but to declare not just the elections invalid, but the whole of UMNO an 
unlawful society as well. The country and, more particularly, UMNO, went into a state of shock.

In most modern democracies, a political catastrophe of this magnitude would have result in the immediate resignation of the party's President and Prime Minister. But Mahathir did not resign. He informed the country that the Government would continue running the country. Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang and Tunku Abdul Rahman called for a vote in 
Parliament to establish Mahathir's legitimacy but those calls were ignored. Mahathir then set in motion the machinery to form a new surrogate party called UMNO Baru. His opponents, however, wanted the old party revived. The eleven UMNO delegates then launched an appeal in the Supreme Court to have the 1987 elections alone declared illegal and the party not an unlawful society.

Mahathir fully understood the danger to him of this pending appeal. He had to act quickly. In October 1987, he launched the notorious Operation Lalang in which at least 106 people were arrested and detained without trial under the ISA, including three very articulate critics, the Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang, political scientist Dr. Chandra Muzaffar and leading lawyer Karpal Singh. The official reason for the arrests was that a highly dangerous security situation had arisen but this has been strongly disputed as nothing more than a shameless fabrication. The broad sweep included even environmentalists and Consumer Association spokesmen. Four of the most outspoken newspapers -The Star, The Sunday Star, Watan and Sin Chew Jit Poh - had their publishing licences suspended. When, after five months, the papers were free to publish again, they were no longer the same.

Mahathir's next move was to push through Parliament far-reaching amendments to the Constitution so that the Executive gained in power enormously at the expense of the Judiciary. There was general indignation at this rude behaviour which shocked a good many people. The indecent haste and the fact that the amendments were made at a time when the Government's main critics were in detention, including the Opposition Leader and six vocal MPs and outspoken newspapers demoralized added further to the appalling injustice of the situation. Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's beloved first Prime Minister, put it succinctly: "It was legal, but was it just?" Others noted angrily that the Constitution had been raped once again. In a speech, the outgoing President of the Bar Council, Param Cumaraswamy, said:

"The Prime Ministe's vile and contemptuous allegations, and the accusations levelled at the Judiciary and our judges left many shocked beyond belief. His speech which was full of venom, hate and spite with no substance whatsoever, illustrated his complete and total ignorance of the role of the Judiciary and the judicial process itself. He has indeed defiled and defaced the Constitution. It is surprising that those 142 MPs who voted in favour, after taking the oath that they would preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, had no compunction about destroying one of its basic structures."

One visiting parliamentarian was astonished at the lack of public debate. In his own country, he said, such amendments would have taken years.

Next, after having curbed the independence of the Judiciary, Mahathir set about destroying its integrity. This was the removal of Tun Salleh Abas as Lord President in 1988, a move which Tunku Abdul Rahman described as "the most shocking story in modern legal and judicial history,"


2. THE DESTRUCTION OF JUDICIAL INTEGRITY

Tun Salleh Abas was a man of humble origins - his father was a sailor and small village trader - who rose to become Lord President, the highest judge in the land and head of the Judiciary while remaining a deeply religious man.

By March 1988, Mahathir's scandalous and violent public attacks on the Judiciary had so provoked the judges that Tun Salleh was obliged to call a conference. Twenty judges met in the Supreme Court one week after the debilitating and shameful Constitutional amendments were made. 

By unanimous agreement, a letter was drafted to the King (also the Sultan of Johore) and copied to all Sultans, expressing disquiet over various comments made by the Prime Minister. 

The letter was delivered on 25 March and Tun Salleh left soon after for medical treatment in the United States followed by a pilgrimage to Mecca. He had a most important duty to perform upon his return: he fixed the hearing of the crucial UMNO Eleven appeal for June and, because of its overwhelming significance, decided that a full coram of nine Supreme Court judges should hear this. 

Three days later, Tun Salleh was suspended from his official capacity by the King on recommendation of the Prime Minister. In the same hour that he received the suspension letter, the Acting Lord President, Tan Sri Abdul Hamid took the UMNO Eleven case out of the calendar so that the link between the two was difficult to deny.

Tun Salleh's suspension came after he refused to bow to Mahathir's pressure to either resign or retire, even though financial inducements were offered, including mention of a lucrative job in the International Development Bank in Jeddah. The initial reason given for the suspension was that the King had taken great displeasure over the letter Tun Salleh 
had written on behalf of all judges. According to official records prepared by the Attorney General, the King had requested Tun Salleh's removal in an audience with the Prime Minister on the "Wednesday morning of 1 May 1988" after the weekly Cabinet Meeting.

There are serious doubts as to whether this audience actually took place. The first of May 1988 fell on a Sunday, not Wednesday as the Attorney General recorded. Even if the day of week were corrected, there can be no Cabinet meeting on a Sunday. That the King expressed great displeasure only on 1 May, when he had in fact received the letter on 25 
March cast further doubt over this assertion. It is difficult to believe that the King wanted Tun Salleh removed purely because he had protested about the public insults directed against the entire Judiciary by the head of the Executive. 

In any event, royal displeasure would not be a constitutionally valid ground for dismissal. Indeed, Mahathir advised the King as much in a letter written four days after this probably fictitious audience; however, the Prime Minister went further in the same letter to say that he would investigate Tun Salleh for any evidence of misbehaviour. 

The King did not clear up the mystery and, in an audience with Tun Salleh, actually asked the latter to step down without giving reasons although the Conference of Rulers had already asked for his reinstatement. 

Amazingly, Tun Salleh was suspended and a Tribunal set up to determine his fate before any formal charges were laid.

The Constitution does not provide for the removal of a Lord President. While the Tribunal need not be an inappropriate means, its composition was to say the least, disgraceful. It was composed of six acting and retired judges, although the Constitution required an odd number to prevent deadlock. 

Of these -four from Malaysia, one from Sri Lanka and one from Singapore -only the Sri Lankan enjoyed a rank comparable to Tun Salleh's. This was contrary to the very reasonable dictum that one should be tried by one's peers rather than one's juniors. The fact that two retired Lord Presidents of Malaysia were available but not invited was glaring. 

There were grave conflicts of interest with three of the Malaysian judges that should have disqualified them from sitting: Tan Sri Abdul Hamid who was next in line to succeed as Lord President and who had also participated in the conference of 20 judges which resulted in the letter to the King; Tan Sri Zahir who, being also the Speaker of the Lower House, was beholden to Mahathir, the principal complainant in the matter at hand; and Tan Sri Abdul Aziz who, although a former judge, was then a practising lawyer and, more incredibly, had two suits pending against him at that time. 

But Tun Salleh's objections were ignored and when the Bar Council issued a statement calling for the Tribunal to be re-constituted, both the New Straits Times and The Star refused to publish it. 

Further, it was decided that the Tribunal would sit in closed sessions although Tun Salleh had requested a public hearing.

The charges, when finally published, were manifestly absurd. Running over 12 sheets of paper, it was clear that quantity had been substituted where quality was lacking, and some of them actually related to Tun Salleh's behaviour after suspension. Many of them related to his speeches and press interviews, whereby sinister meanings were imputed to various innocuous comments that he had made. 

To cite an instance, in a speech at the University of Malaya, he had said: "The role of the courts is very important to bring about public order. If there is no public order there will be chaos in this country and if there is chaos, no one can feel safe" On this basis, Tun Salleh was charged with making statements criticizing the Government which displayed prejudice and bias against the latter. 

Another statement of his, "In a democratic system, the courts play a prominent role as agent of stability but they can perform this function only if judges are trusted," resulted in the charge that he had ridiculed the Government by imputing that it did not trust the judges. These charges were doubly ludicrous in the light of Mahathir's many poisonous attacks against the Judiciary.

It is not surprising that Tun Salleh, after reading this catalogue of fantasy crimes, refused to appear before what was so evidently a kangaroo court. 

The Tribunal, after refusing representations made by Raja Aziz, Tun Salleh's leading counsel, that it had no constitutional validity to sit, chose instead to proceed so hastily that it wound up deliberations, including the examination of witnesses with just four hours work. As it prepared to issue its Report, 

Tun Salleh's lawyers sought an urgent stay of proceedings in the High Court. This would normally be granted immediately at the least possibility that an 
injustice may be about to be done but, here, events turned into utter farce.

Instead of immediately reaching a decision as expected, the presiding judge, Datuk Ajaib Singh, after the court had been in languorous session the whole day that Friday, adjourned hearings for 9.30 am the next day. On Saturday however, the judge emerged in court only at 11.50 am and, even then, postponed hearings again for the Monday! 

In desperation, Tun Salleh's lawyers, knowing that the Tribunal could easily release its Report before then, sought the assistance of Supreme Court judge, Tan Sri Wan Suleiman, in his Chambers. 

The latter agreed to hear them in open court in half an hour's time and called a coram of all remaining Supreme Court, one of whom, Tan Sri Hashim Yeop, refused to sit. The soap opera reached an apogee of ridiculousness when Tan Sri Abdul Hamid, head of the Tribunal and Acting Lord President, gave orders for the doors of Supreme Court to be locked and for the seal of the Supreme Court to be secreted away!

Undeterred, the five Supreme Court judges ordered the policeman on duty to open the door forthwith. After less than half an hour, the Court ordered the Tribunal not to submit any recommendation, report or advice to the King. Tun Salleh's lawyers were typing the Order to serve personally to the Tribunal at Parliament House when news arrived that the gates of Parliament House had been locked!

At this point, Justice Wan Suleiman rose to the occasion and, calling the office of the Inspector General of Police, told a senior officer that any impediment to serving the Order would constitute contempt of court. The gates of Parliament swung open and, at 4 pm, Raja Aziz and his team served the Order to the Tribunal members who were found to be still hard at work on a word-processor that Saturday afternoon. All six members accepted service without complaint.

It would appear that justice had at last prevailed but, four days later, all five Supreme Court judges were suspended. Almost every rule that was broken to suspend Tun Salleh was broken again to suspend them. 

The prohibition order they had made were revoked within days. A second Tribunal eventually reinstated three of the judge: Tan Sri Azmi Kamaruddin, Tan Sri Eusoff Abdoolcader and Tan Sri Wan Hamzah but Tan Sri Wan Suleiman and Datuk George Edward Seah were removed from office.

The UMNO Eleven case was quickly dismissed. The removal of Tun Salleh also saw the resignation of Deputy PM Datuk Musa Hitam who, according to popular wisdom, could no longer stomach Mahathir's ways.

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Well, that's the long and short of it. And it took almost two decades and multiple apologies by the governments after Mahathir retired to help right this wrong.

But in the middle of last year in June 2015, Mahathir suddenly talked about this issue again - this tie in an even more twisted and bizarre version.

Dr Mahathir again claimed, as he has done before, that he had to take the blame for Salleh’s sacking and that it was the late Tuanku Iskandar’s wish to remove Salleh. 

“The Johor Sultan never liked Salleh. He (Salleh) wrote a letter complaining about noise coming from his (Sultan’s) house. That was wrong… but Salleh wrote the letter and copied it to every Sultan. The Johor Sultan, who was the Agong, was annoyed and said this is the wrong thing to do, and he asked me to dismiss Salleh,” said Mahathir

Yes, you read correctly. Mahathir blamed the late Johor Sultan for the removal of our highest judge (as well as the sackign and suspension of 5 other top judges) on the excuse that the Late Johor Sultan was unhappy at Tun Abbas because Tun Abbas complained that the Sultan's palace was noisy !!

Immediately and rightfully, the son of the late Sultan and the current Johor Tunku Bendehara slammed Mahathir.

KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 — The Tunku Bendahara of Johor has claimed that his father, the late Sultan Iskandar Ismail had been “used” by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to remove the country’s top judge in the late 1980s. 

Nearly three decades on, Tunku Abdul Majid Idris Ibni Sultan Iskandar sought to reignite debate over the controversial sacking of Tun Salleh Abas as Lord President by holding the former prime minister accountable for the act that triggered the 1988 judicial crisis. 

“Mahathir used my father to remove Tun Salleh, period. 

“Tun Salleh is a good man and my father acknowledged that. He has already made his peace with Tun Salleh,” the 44-year-old wrote in a short Facebook post yesterday, taking a leaf from another Johor prince’s playbook. 

“Mahathir, please don’t blame people who can’t defend themselves anymore,” he added. 

Tunku Abdul Majid’s remarks follows Dr Mahathir’s assertion Saturday that the late Sultan Iskandar had disliked Salleh and was instrumental in removing the judge from office after the latter complained about the noise from the king’s house that was being renovated.

“The Sultan of Johor, who was Agong, was very annoyed. This was a wrong thing to do, and he asked me to dismiss Salleh Abas,” Dr Mahathir told a forum at the Cooler Lumpur Festival here over the weekend. 

The 89-year-old said a tribunal was then set up, adding that the Attorney-General at the time did not want to mention the Agong’s name, but made Dr Mahathir out to be the main complainant against Salleh instead. 

Dr Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, said he has never restricted judges and denied ever talking to them, except to the Lord President who would inform him about official matters like promotions and appointments. 

Dr Mahathir first made the claim that Salleh was sacked for complaining about the noisy construction work at the Agong’s house in his first autobiography, “A Doctor In The House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad”, published in 2011. 

The former Umno president had denied removing the former Lord President, along with five Supreme Court judges, in retaliation when the court declared the party illegal after the 1987 Umno election that saw Dr Mahathir narrowly defeating Kelantan prince Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. 

“I’ve explained this over and over again – I did not interfere. I’m prepared to go as a Muslim – we swear before Quran and all that.... I didn’t ask anybody to dismiss Salleh Abas. But I got that reputation,” Dr Mahathir said.

Looking at what he had done and the damage he made on our judiciary, you would expect that he is the last person to be qualified to question the Attorney-General in the seditious manner he did recently.

A person on Facebook commented this.

While I do not agree that anything justifies what he did back then, but it has already been done. Unless a Royal Commission of Inquiry is launched to determine if Tun Mahathir should be held responsible and be punished for it, there is little we can do to change history.

I do agree with that person commenting that the fact that he continues to attack others while conveniently ignoring what he had done is shameful and pure hypocrisy - of the highest order.

Another friend of mine commented this which I cannot agree more:

One thing about the opposition is that it used to object very vehemently against Tun M when he committed that wrong. Tun M survived the onslaught due to his association with the ruling party. If the opposition really wants him to account for all his past wrong, now would have been the best time. But politicking makes them blind to this opportunity ...

Current events with Tun Mahathir clearly proves that our current Pakatan Harapan opposition is really not interested in justice despite decades of calling and complaining about it. They are clear opportunists willing to set-aside true justice when it serves their interests.

In his June 2015 interview, Mahathir did say he was prepared to swear before the Quran to defend himself on this - but so far that remains so much hot air.

Do you think he would actually dare?

Maybe someone should remind Tun Mahathir to fulfill this vow to swear on the Quran before his story on the same events changes again?

And after this extra-ordinary episode, read what he did to ensure that he no longer had to go to such lengths to remain in power in The Shameful 43 votes.