Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Did the courts bend over backwards for Najib? By James Chai & P Gunasegaram
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
Malaysiakini : A few minutes ago (in part 1
of the interview), I talked about the resolutions, KWAP’s (civil
services pension fund Retirement Fund Incorporated) documents, the
minutes and so on.
So you really have the company secretary
turning up and saying, “I was the company secretary at such and such
date, here is the original minute book, here are the resolutions, and so
forth.”
So, if you don’t have the original documents, it doesn’t get accepted?
That’s
right… Whereas in civil cases, everything is done by photocopies and
everybody concerned has a bundle of documents: the plaintiff’s lawyers,
the defendant’s lawyers, the judge and the witness, all have
photocopies.
Only if somebody challenges the authenticity of a
document - if someone says that it is not a genuine document - would you
have to bring the original.
In all my trial experience, there has
never been a need to bring the maker because of forgery or the like. So
I think in the SRC trial, we called 50 or 60 witnesses, and probably 20
were just makers. They were nominal witnesses. There was not much
cross-examination also, as he would just confirm, “Yes, it is my
document”.
So other countries have introduced new provisions: insisting lawyers exchange documents and reach an agreement.
And
if they don’t reach an agreement, then the trial judge would take a
very hands-on approach in case management and say, “Look, what are the
documents you are objecting to? Why? Why do you need the maker? Then the
judge rules [on that] before trial, so everything would be smoother.
So
one of the things I had in mind when I was attorney-general was to
amend the Criminal Procedure Code to have ‘trials by photocopies’.
That’s the easiest way to understand. Unfortunately, it did not
materialise.
On a related note, from the beginning at the
magistrate and the High Court to the end of the Federal Court, the
defence lawyers constantly brought up applications like gag orders, and
adjournment requests to stall the trial. Do you think there is a valid
claim to be said that there was a consistent thread to delay proceedings
or do you think these applications were valid?
Don’t
forget that the litigation process is adversarial and so I may be
biased. Typically, a plaintiff who listens to an application by the
defendant would think, in his own mind, that it was a waste of time,
frivolous and vice versa. That is human nature and likewise between
prosecution and defence.
Once you accept this bias, I thought most
of the applications by the defence (in the SRC trials) were frivolous
and without merit. I think they were all dismissed. I cannot remember a
single application which was upheld. But the defence does it, and it is
for the court to make a quick decision, which the judges did in this
case.
Where we went wrong was on the adjournments and the time,
which I have already explained. Our court system is probably easy on
adjournment, and again, that is a Malaysian problem.
The
Malaysian legal system is notorious for easy adjournments. We always had
that. Just like India, which is world famous for easy adjournments, and
the consequent delays. It is endemic.
Do you think the system needs to change, and maybe new structures imposed to make trials faster?
I agree, but there is tremendous resistance from the Bar, first of all, so let’s blame lawyers first.
Lawyers,
in Malaysia, are the first opponents of any reform. Perhaps we can have
a committee of judges, retired judges, the AGC, and the Bar, and
decide: “We cannot go on, we must make trials faster and more
efficient”.
So basically, compel lawyers to improve the system.
The
bulk of the defence’s case was contingent on bias. They think that
justice Nazlan at the High Court level was conflicted, as he was legal
counsel with Maybank, and subsequently, they tried to recuse (Chief
Justice) Tengku Maimun (Tuan Mat) because of her husband’s Facebook
post. Was there bias, and if there were, how likely was it to influence
the outcome?
All these things happened at the Federal
Court, not in the High Court. So I don’t have personal knowledge as I
was not in the Federal Court. And my knowledge is like everybody else’s
in the public domain.
Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat
But
yes, I always comfort my team by telling them that these things happen,
and when such applications [of bias] are made, that is a sure sign that
the party making such applications do not want to hear the case on the
merits.
When you have a weak case on the merits, and the merits
could either be law, facts, witnesses, documents or the totality of the
case (are we going to win or lose?), when lawyers have weak cases on the
merits, they turn to such applications. And this is the oldest trick in
the book. So you just have to look at them calmly and coolly, deal with
them.
The Federal Court gave them 10 days, which is a real luxury
because this was the apex court, typically you’re lucky if you get one
day for the hearing of an appeal.
Najib got 10 days which was
fixed about five months ago. And yet he came to court and did not want
to pursue his appeal on the merits. So that tells me about the lack of
merits of his appeal.
On that related note, it was
shocking to me to see that, at the Federal Court, with some of the best
lawyers from both sides, in the end, the defence did not present a
single new submission. How rarely does this happen at the apex court?
It
was absolutely extraordinary. The best way to understand such behaviour
is if you had asked about a week before it happened, any barrister or
judge in the entire common law world, that is 60 countries (in the
British Commonwealth) - it could be Jamaica, Nigeria, India, Hong Kong
or Canada, as we all share the same jurisprudence - and if you told the
lawyers or the judge in any of these countries, “Look, this is what is
going to unfold when the appeal is called up, they are given 10 days,
and this is what is going to happen,” all of them would say it could not
happen, you are telling a fiction, that is not how lawyers behave.
It
was so extraordinary because it was suicidal and kamikaze. Because at
the end of the day, the first duty of a lawyer is to his client - to
preserve the interest of his client. How is a client’s interest
protected by this kamikaze attitude? The client is now in jail.
Nobody
in the common law world could have predicted that. They are authors of
their own misfortune. It was self-inflicted or self-induced.
