PUTRAJAYA: The Cabinet has agreed that investigations be
conducted into all allegations against former Prime Minister Tun Dr
Mahathir Mohamad and five others identified in the Royal Commission
of Inquiry report on the V.K. Lingam video clip.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Mohd Zaid
Ibrahim said the five others were lawyer Datuk V.K. Lingam, tycoon
Tan Sri Vincent Tan, Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan
Tengku Mansor and former Chief Justices Tun Eusoff Chin and Tun
Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim.
Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail said he would go
through the report before announcing whether he would be ordering a
probe.
“I will study the recommendations in the report very carefully,
after which I will issue a statement at the appropriate time.
“Please give us time to do our job properly,” he said.
Zaid said the six would be investigated for offences under the
Sedition Act, Official Secrets Act and the Penal Code, which
included obstruction of justice.
“All the recommendations in the report are advisory in nature so
we have to have another investigation,” he said, adding that the
Government had taken note of the recommendations for judicial
reform and the establishment of a Judicial Appointments
Commission.
“The Government is in the process of finalising the relevant
laws to set up this commission and it will be made known soon,” he
said, adding that the Government also proposed to include the
recognition of “judicial power” as proposed by the Commission.
He said these moves were vital to help restore the people’s
confidence in the judiciary.
The Cabinet, he said, had urged the public, including the media,
to allow uninterrupted investigations without undue pressure and
prejudice against any individual identified in the report.
“It must be reiterated that in our legal system, an accused is
presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,” he told
reporters at the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s
Department here yesterday.
The Royal Commission was formed to verify the authenticity of
the video clip purportedly showing prominent lawyer Lingam on the
phone brokering judicial appointments with a senior judge.
Twenty-one witnesses testified at the 17-day inquiry which began on
Jan 14.
Zaid also said that the Cabinet had agreed for the contents of
the report to be released and sold to the public.
The report, which comes in four volumes comprising 2,889 pages,
will cost RM541.60; of which the main report costs RM161.40 while
the notes of proceedings, statutory declaration and lists of
exhibits are priced at RM123.30, RM120 and RM136.90
respectively.
The public can buy the report at the Legal Affairs Division from
Tuesday afternoon.
In its report, the commission said that the video clip, made by
businessman Loh Gwo Burne, was indeed recorded at Lingam's house in
December 2001.
It said it had no hesitation in finding that the clip to be
genuine, real, reliable and trustworthy and its contents true in
substance and material particulars.
In examining Lingam and Fairuz's testimonies, which they
described as bare denials, against the direct evidence elicited
from the phone conversation as well as the evidence of Gwo Burne
and his businessman father Loh Mui Fah, the commission found that
it was none other than Fairuz that Lingam was speaking to on the
telephone.
The panel also said the evidence showed that Lingam was not
intoxicated during the conversations, as he had suggested.
It added that the evidence also militates against Lingam's other
suggestion that he could have been “bullshitting” or bragging.
The commission said that, in the final analysis, there was
conceivably an insidious movement by Lingam with the covert
assistance of his close friends Tan and Tengku Adnan to involve
themselves actively in the appointment of judges, in particular
that of Fairuz as Chief judge of Malaya and later Court of Appeal
president.
In the process, the panel added that Dr Mahathir was also
entangled.
While noting that the group's ultimate aim could not be
ascertained, given the limitation of the terms of reference, the
commission said it was reasonable to suggest that it could not be
anything but self-serving.
The panel said the collective and cumulative actions of the main
characters concerned had the effect of seriously undermining the
independence and integrity of the judiciary as a whole.
