Sep 21, 07 5:13pm
Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang is convinced that
senior lawyer VK Lingam was chatting with Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz
Sheikh Abdul Halim in the latest video scandal to rock the nation.
In a press statement today, the veteran politician listed out several
reasons for this conclusion.
The most obvious being that although two days have passed since the
video clip was exposed, there has been pin drop silence from both
Lingam and Ahmad Fairuz.
"It would be the first reaction of anyone to a doctored video clip,"
he said. "But Ahmad Fairuz has been in ex-communicado for the past
two days, although he would have no difficulty accessing the video on
the Internet."
He said the person Lingam spoke to was referred to as 'Datuk' and
there were talks of the person getting a 'Tan Sri-ship' in the same
year.
Lim pointed out that Ahmad Fairuz was awarded the Panglima Setia
Mahkota (PSM) by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in June 2002, making him a
Tan Sri.
The video clip, revealed by PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim, was
said to have been recorded in 2002.
Lim also noted that there were references making "Datuk Heliliah,
Datuk Ramli and Datuk Maroop" as judges.
On Feb 8, 2002, former solicitor-general Heliliah Mohd Yusuf, former
chief registrar Ramly Aliand, former commissioner of law revision
Ahmad Maarop received their letters of appointment as High Court
judges from the King. Their appointments were from Feb 1, 2002.
There was also reference that "in three months time" the person, whom
Lingam was talking to, would be made Court of Appeal president and
"six months time" he was going to be chief justice.
Ahmad Fairuz was sworn in as Court of Appeal president on Dec 1, 2002
and appointed chief justice on March 17, 2003.
AG rapped
Meanwhile, Lim also took a swipe at Attorney-General Abdul Gani
Patail for saying that there were no criminal elements in the video
clip and that Lingam's conversation was a 'monologue' in nature.
Yesterday, Abdul Gani said it was unclear who the lawyer was speaking
to in the eight-minute video clip.
"There is no clear reference that he was talking to a top judicial
officer," he was reported as saying.
Describing Abdul Gani's comments as "outrageous", Lim said the video
clip raised important questions on the chief justice's commitment to
judicial accountability.
"How can the chief legal officer of the government try to minimise
the gravity of the judicial misconduct exposed by the Lingam tape and
shirk off his responsibility by claiming that Lingam was in a
monologue?" he asked.
The video clip showed Lingam, among others, discussing Ahmad Fairuz's
appointment as chief justice of Malaya and chief justice.
There was also a discussion on the appointment of 'friendly' senior
judges.
Lim also noted that Abdul Gani had not challenged the authenticity of
the conversation.
----------------------------------------------------------------
This e-mail has been sent via JARING webmail at http://www.jaring.my
No comments:
Post a Comment