Mahathir’s statement on the controversy over Eusoff Chin most outrageous,  the height of irresponsibility and the latest blot on government’s lack of commitment  on a   just rule of law by refusing to support the principle of judicial accountability

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang 

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The Prime Minister is no stranger to making outrageous statements and allegations but what he said yesterday must rank as  his  most outrageous statement  in his 19 years as Prime Minister,  when he said he "believed   there were attempts to create friction within the Government machinery out of the quarrel between the Prime Minister’s Department and the Chief Justice", that "those behind the attempts were hoping that judges would become disillusioned, leading them into making unfavourable rulings against the government", and that there were "political motives behind this,  with the intention of putting judges and the Government at loggerheads" so that "when judges get angry, they will make ruling that will not benefit the Government".

By making such a statement, Mahathir  was not only haunted by the "ghost" of Anwar Ibrahim, but  making a blatant and unashamed call to judges to rule in favour of the Government regardless of the principle of judicial accountability.

Mahathir had  blithely ignored the fact that it was the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Rais Yatim who sparked off the controversy over Eusoff Chin’s "improper judicial conduct" when judges are prohibited even from engaging in "appearances of impropriety". Even more serious, the Prime Minister had chosen to disregard the fact that no attempts had been made by Eusoff Chin to give a full and proper public accounting of his New Zealand holiday although photographs of him and Lingam had surfaced on the Internet since early 1998, leaving many questions antithetical to the principle of judicial accountability unanswered.

In fact, in the October Parliament last year, I had tabled a substantive motion about serious allegations of judicial impropriety for debate but the government refused to give it time.

My substantive motion had read:
 

"That this House, under Standing Order 36(8),

"EXPRESSES grave concern at the  most serious allegations about judicial impropriety alleged in court in August  in the Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ) defamation case, viz:
 

• that  the 1994 judgment by Justice Datuk Mohtar Sidin in the Tan Sri Vincent Tan vs MGG Pillai defamation  was ‘written in part by the plaintiff's counsel, Dato V.K. Lingam, and initially typed by the said Dato V.K. Lingam's secretaries, viz. one Jayanthi and Sumanthi’; that the judgment was corrected by the said Dato V.K. Lingam and the final draft dispatched’ to the judge ‘on floppy disk.’
• That Datuk Lingam  placed Chief Justice Tun Eusoff Chin in his debt by getting their families to holiday together in New Zealand. The holiday involved flights together to luxury  resorts in Queenstown and Christchurch, where Dato V.K. Lingam and the chief justice ‘posed for pictures with their arms around each other and with each other's families.’
 
"NOTES that neither Tun Eusuff Chin nor Datuk Mohtar Sidin had responded or cleared their name although more than a month had passed since the allegations of judicial impropriety although they strike at the very core of public confidence in judicial  independence and intetgrity;

"CALLS on Tun Eusuff Chin and Datuk Mohtar Sidin to appear before the full House of the Dewan Rakyat to answer the charges of judicial impropriety and to  defend their integrity."

Although my substantive motion was not allowed to be debated, no action had been taken by any quarter to respond and answer these serious charges of judicial  impropriety.

Mahathir’s dismissal yesterday of the call for a judicial tribunal or a Royal Commission of Inquiry even before the Cabinet could meet today is a sad commentary on Cabinet impotence and irrelevance on the 19th year of Mahathir as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

(14/6/2000)