Interview with Datuk Syed Ahmad Idid

Santha Oorjitham
New Straits Times, 11 June 2006

AFTER suffering in silence for 10 years, Datuk Syed Ahmad Idid Syed Abdullah has lifted the lid on the report he wrote alleging serious corruption in the judiciary. His report was dismissed as a poison letter by the authorities and he was vilified by the Press, including the New Straits Times, and treated like an invisible man by his friends.

TODAY, he is ready to speak with candour on the case. TODAY, for the first time he says that he was forced to resign from the Bench. TODAY, for the first time, he says that the allegations were never really investigated.

On July 1, 1996, Datuk Syed Ahmad Idid Syed Abdullah walked away from his position as a High Court judge. That was the fallout after writing an anonymous letter about corruption and abuse of power in the judiciary.

On July 9, then Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah, without naming names, said no further action would be taken against the author since the resignation was ‘a strong punishment’.

Syed Ahmad, who was appointed the director of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration in 2004, tells what it costs to be a whistleblower.

Q: The Bar Council has been calling for a Judicial Commission to look at appointments, transfers, promotions, remuneration, training and continuing education of judges. They say this would improve the quality of judges. Similar commissions have been set up in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and Hong Kong. What do you think?

A: They are just following what I suggested at the 12th Malaysian Law Conference in December 2003. I had raised this matter, first of all, after what had happened to me.If there had been a commission, I think it would have looked into what exactly happened. But there was no commission.

Q: You have never confirmed, on record, what happened in 1996.

A: What happened to me is well known by those who investigated but the decision was perverse. (Laughs.)No one can say who is right and who is wrong. That is not my line but I do wish that the truth would come out.

Q: At the time, you said you resigned because you felt "quite tired, a general debility ...and I needed a change." Were you forced to retire?

A: If you ask me a direct question, I’ll give you a direct answer. Yes, I was forced to resign and at that time, my health was also suffering because of the pressure on the heart.

Q: How would you describe the poison-pen letter?

A: If you want to use the modern (term), ‘poison-pen letter’, it poisoned the writer. It poisoned the whistleblower.It poisoned the right people who have got something to inform the Government and they were poisoned by the process.I would call it, as Datuk Shaikh Daud Md Ismail (former Court of Appeal judge, in The Sunday Interview, June 4) has called it, a petition to the Chief Justice (Tun Mohd Eusoff Chin) because he was supposed to know what was going on about improving the standards of the judiciary.

Q: The late Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah said in July 1996 that the 12 judges implicated in the letter were interviewed by the authorities. He said he and his officers had read the investigation papers of the ACA and the police, and that the allegations were "wholly untrue and baseless".

A: I will leave it to what he wants to say. When I attended the prayers for the funeral of Tun Mohamed Suffian Hashim (in 2000), he approached me and offered his hand. He said: "We are still friends?" I said: "Yes, we are friends."Of course I shook his hand because I knew he was doing a duty and he was forced to do a duty.But I asked him, "Was there a pistol at your neck when you did what you did to me?" He replied, "No, it was a cannon." We laughed.The huge machinery was used against an individual. Actually, there were elements who urged that I be placed under the ISA but the police, being professionals, ignored them. No statement was ever made by the police or the ACA, only the Press, like the NST, went ‘raving mad’.It all depends on the standard of investigation. You can go and ask somebody, "Did you commit a crime?" and he says "No". Then you say "Thank you" and so you say it is baseless.But if you then go and find out, checking accounts, background information, who has been where for the last three months, you will unearth the worms.

Q: Datuk Shaikh Daud recommended that to tackle allegations of corruption in the judiciary, protection should be provided for whistleblowers. From your own experience, would you support this?

A: Not only from my own experience. After the Enron case, the US Government now protects whistleblowers because through whistleblowers you can unearth a lot of crimes.And that should be the objective of every Government.

Q: What happened to you, when you blew the whistle?

A: I lost everything. I lost my pension. I lost several years of my life. After I resigned, I became the Invisible Man.Some of those who knew me just passed by as if I did not exist.I could see only nice people who stuck with me. My true friends, relatives and, surprise, surprise, even a busload of religious people met me to offer prayers for my safety and good health.I am perpetually grateful to all and to Allah. I also became a barometer for incorruptibility.Those who were and are clean (judges and others) continued to associate with me. The rest just slithered away.Not once in my ordeal did I waver in my loyalty to Malaysia. There were two chances for me to migrate but my wife, children and I had no qualms whatsoever that Malaysia must remain our home and the focus of our loyalty.It was an individual or two who did me in and so I cannot blame the country or the Government.

Q: Why was your poison-pen letter anonymous?

A: It was not a poison-pen letter. It was points for the Chief Justice to investigate and where evidence was clear, to prosecute those involved.Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman said (to Mingguan Malaysia, June 4) that the allegations were not investigated; on the other hand, the poor judge who wrote it was investigated.This is coming from a former attorney-general. I think he knew what he was talking about.It seems to have been the thoughts of many judges, so I shouldn’t take credit for writing something which was actually contributed by several judges.

Q: Does a lack of protection for whistleblowers prevent people from coming forward?

A: I am sure because the message then was: If you tell something about wrongdoing, then you are wrong.Whereas people who inform about what is wrong are not against the Government, but against the wrongdoers and criminals.

Q: Chief Justice Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim said on May 30 that he had forwarded poison-pen letters on the issue of corruption to the ACA. He said the judiciary had found no "credible evidence" for these allegations.

A: I would call upon not only the judiciary but the ACA and police to have better quality investigators, and that they be given proper equipment and full powers to look up records.In other words, you really investigate and I think you are bound to get somewhere and quite speedily, too.

Q: What do you think of the suggestion by the Chief Justice that corruption could be prevented by having more than one judge presiding over a trial?

A: I have mulled over that statement and I have found that while it sounds possible to eradicate the possibility of corruption that way, there is nothing to stop all three being corrupted. The quality of human beings is the most important. That is something you can’t buy. Remuneration is part of it but sometimes, what is OK for some is not enough for others. It is the selection.