PI Bala to re-appear to testify?

BREAKING NEWS : The fugitive blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, or RPK, has raised the ante again against Datuk Seri Najib Razak by threatening to expose another statutory declaration by missing private investigator P. Balasubramaniam.

Talk has been swirling for several weeks now that the private investigator was going to surface after going missing since July last year.

There has been speculation that Balasubramaniam would restate allegations against the prime minister he first made in a statutory declaration last year linking Najib to the murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu.

In a posting on his Malaysia-today.net portal, RPK alleges that Balasubramaniam had been living in India since he went missing and had been paid to keep quiet.

“Little did they know that Bala was just biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike back.

“And now he is striking back and has come out to reveal what really happened since the time he signed his first statutory declaration, followed by the second one the following day, 16 months ago,” RPK wrote.

For the opposition, this development, if true, will provide a chance to put the prime minister under pressure and put a difficult issue for him back on the table.

While RPK provides little concrete evidence for his allegations, such is his following and influence among Malaysians that his attacks against Najib remain damaging.

In his latest attacks, he publishes photographs of cheques allegedly made out to Balasubramaniam.

And he promised to make more revelations within the next month.

Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib’s closest associates, had been charged for abetment and tried for the 2006 murder of Altantuya.

Abdul Razak was eventually acquitted. But two policemen who were once on Najib’s security detail were found guilty of the murder.

Abdul Razak had admitted that Altantuya was his lover.

But the close ties between the major players in the murder and Najib have always dogged the prime minister, with critics like RPK frequently accusing the government of a conspiracy to protect the PM.

Last year, Balasubramaniam caused a stir when he made public a statutory declaration in which he alleged Najib had a sexual relationship with Altantuya.

But he then made another statutory declaration a day later retracting the accusations against Najib.

After that Balasubramaniam disappeared.

The private investigator had been hired by Abdul Razak to help him deal with Altantuya, who was alleged to have been harassing him.

Balasubramaniam was also a witness in the murder trial.

[Source: The MalaysianInsider]

Geronimo's Take : If this is true, then Najib may be screwed this time. I hope he is sleeping easy these days as so many things are beginning to unfold at such rapid pace.

The Herald 2010 permit cancelled

The future has just grown murkier for the country’s only Catholic newspaper, which is locked in a lawsuit against the Home Minister over the right to publish the word “Allah” to mean God for Christians.

The Malaysian Insider was told that The Herald’s publishing permit for next year was retracted recently.

Father Lawrence Andrew is the editor of The Herald. – Picture by Jack Ooi

The weekly’s priest-editor, Reverend Father Lawrence Andrew, explained that the Catholic Church which publishes the multi-lingual weekly, had first applied for the annual licence in late July.

The Home Ministry had replied on Aug 5 and approved their application to publish in four languages: Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin and Tamil, but rejected their request to add a new language, Kadazandusun.

The church received a second letter from the Home Ministry on Sept 3, which promptly retracted the approval given a month earlier even though the RM800 publishing fee had been paid up.

No reason was given for the rejection, Andrew said.

Instead, the Home Ministry ordered the church to disclose its bank accounts and send in the latest statement, which Andrew found odd.

“They are a licensing body for permits, not a commercial body,” he said.

The priest also said they were forced to put in a letter asking for a refund on the RM800 payment, which he also found strange.

He noted that the ministry should have returned the money automatically, and added that he would not follow the directive as it may indicate that the church agreed with the rejection.

Andrew said the church has enlisted the aide of Datuk Michael Chong, a special officer to the Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and a church-going Catholic, to clear the confusing chain of events.

Chong responded promptly and told him the deputy home minister had “overturned” the decision to reject the church’s permit.

But there has been no breakthrough since then. Their last communication was yesterday, through an SMS exchange.

“We’re in limbo right now,” Andrew said.

[Source : The MalaysianInsider]

Geronimo's Take: There goes Najib's 1Malaysia. This is so vindictive to say the least.

Then who is the key witness?

You may need to read this over a couple of times before you come to a conclusion :

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz today said that lawyer VK Lingam's former secretary Jayanthi LG Naidu was not the key witness which the MACC was looking for to conclude the probe against the lawyer.

"It is not her. They are looking for someone else," he said without revealing the identity of the mystery witness.

In a separate statement, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission confirmed that Jayanthi was not the witness which it was looking for.

[Source: Malaysiakini]

What a whole load of crap! If Jayanthi is not the key witness, then who is? The least Nazri and MACC could have done was to tell us that they were looking for a certain Mr/Ms X, and I am sure if they can't find this witness, Sivarasa and his team would be too happy to oblige. Maybe this key witness is nothing more than a smokescreen to send the Lingam case into oblivion? I tell you who the key witness/s might be - they are the airline pilots who flew them to and from NZ OR the receptionist who attended to them when they checked in at the hotels in Singapore and NZ OR the captain of the NZ cruise ship OR the ticketing clerk of Holiday Tours OR the salesgirl who sold them the winter clothings OR it could be Eusoff Chin's/Lingam's drivers OR ....... Come of it Nazri stop insulting our intelligence. You have Jayanthi's testimony and Malaysiakini's Bowman's Report. Both are equally damning and yet you continue to stonewall the case. It is just simply unbelievable!!!!

"Allah" ban: Church scores initial victory

Eight parties including seven Islamic religious councils are no longer intervenors in the Kuala Lumpur Roman Catholic Church's application for a judicial review over the usage of the word "Allah".

High Court judge Lau Bee Lan ruled that based on the Federal Court ruling on Sept 3 in the case of Majlis Agama Islam Selangor vs Bong Boon Chuen & 150 others, the High Court had no jurisdiction to allow intervention in judicial review proceedings under Order 15 Rule 6(2)(b) of the Rules of the High Court 1980.

She then set aside her own order on Aug 3, allowing the eight parties to intervene in the new application by Archbishop Murphy Pakiam for a judicial review over the usage of the word "Allah" in the church's weekly publications of The Herald magazine.

The eight parties are the Islamic religious councils of Perak, Terengganu, Penang, Selangor, Kedah, Johor and Melaka, and the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association.

The decision was made in chambers.

Court hearing to kick off on Dec 14

The church's counsel, S Selvarajah, told the media that the court fixed Dec 14 to hear the merits of the case.

Selvarajah said the court should hear the case before Dec 31 as The Herald's publication permit for 2009 would expire on Dec 31.

On Feb 16, Pakiam (right), as the publisher of The Herald, filed a new application for a judicial review after a similar application in 2008 was deemed academic following the expiry of The Herald's publication permit for Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2008.

In the application, naming the Home Ministry and the government as respondents, he is seeking, among others, a declaration that the decision by the respondents on Jan 7, 2009, prohibiting him from using the word "Allah" in the 'Herald-The Catholic Weekly' publication is illegal and that the word "Allah" is not exclusive to the religion of Islam.

- Bernama

VK Lingam - now maybe we have a case

BREAKING NEWS :Pakatan Rakyat MPs today presented the alleged key witness that may support their claims that senior lawyer VK Lingam and former chief justice Tun Eusoff Chin had planned their New Zealand trip together.

They hope the alleged key witness, Lingam’s former secretary Jayanthi Naidu, will prove that the government is attempting to cover up the scandal which has raised suspicions about possible collusion.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had said there was no case to answer and that a key witness could not be located. It had also said that Lingam had not broken any laws for fixing judicial appointments as there was no evidence he had a hand in the appointments.

Lingam had claimed he was not the person captured in a video that opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim showed in 2007, claiming it was proof that judicial appointments were fixed during Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s reign as prime minister.

Appearing in the Parliament lobby today alongside R Sivarasa, Subang MP and PKR vice-president, a smiling Jayanthi reiterated she had been the one who arranged the trip for both Eusoff and Lingam.

“After the Royal Commission proceedings, I gave another statement to the MACC in the presence of my lawyer (which) among the matters... were that Lingam and Eusoff and families’ holiday trip to New Zealand was all paid for by Lingam,” she said.

Jayanthi, who quit working for Lingam in 1995, also made fresh claims of how Lingam had “fixed” a judgement by a judge in the Vincent Tan v MGG Pillai libel case back in 1993.

Lingam had represented Tan Sri Vincent Tan in the case, in which Pillai was ordered to pay compensation in the millions and resulted in the veteran journalist declaring bankruptcy.

“The judgement delivered by Datuk Mokhtar Sidin were written in Lingam’s office. I was among the various staff present in the office assisting in the process.”

“I am also aware of a few incidents in Lingam’s office where he and other lawyers have also written or assisted the writing of draft judgements,” added the former secretary.

Jayanthi also claimed she had been instructed many times by her former boss to withdraw cash in amounts between RM100,000 and RM300,000 to be “hand delivered by others to individual judges.”

All her claims had been made to both the MACC and the Royal Commission set up to probe a video clip of Lingam purportedly brokering the appointment of judges.

Though the commission strongly suggested that action be taken against Lingam, Eusoff and others involved, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz yesterday told parliament that no further action will be taken as they have, technically, not broken the law.

He also said the MACC had cleared both Lingam and Eusoff of any wrongdoing as a “key witness” could not be located.

It is uncertain as to whether Jayanthi is the person MACC is looking for but PR leaders insist that Lingam’s former secretary is the so-called missing key witness.

Sivarasa claimed with the presence of Jayanthi today, Nazri and government had blatantly lied and are trying to sweep the case under the carpet.

“It shows that the government had, from the beginning, never intended or possessed the political will to take any measures to reform the judiciary,” he said.

Sivarasa added that while there are no longer any legal ramifications, the move to present the alleged key witness to prove the purported cover-up attempt will leave the government open to judgment by the electorate.

And this may prove to be a setback for the government who is trying to win support from a sceptical public, said the Subang MP.

[Source: The MalaysianInsider]

The VK Lingam case - the twist & turn, finally no case

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz sparked an uproar in Parliament today [November 9 2009] when he said “judiciary fixer” V.K. Lingam had been let off the hook “because he had broken no law”.

Nazri also suggested that Lingam breached no laws as he might “have just acted to fix the appointment of judges as if he was brokering the appointment of senior judges to impress people”.

“I am not denying that it was Lingam in the tape. But I am also saying that there are a lot of conmen in this world. Who knows he might have just acted when he was calling the so-called judges to impress,” said Nazri in his ministerial winding-up speech on the 2010 Budget debate.

Nazri argued that from the legal perspective Lingam could have merely made a suggestion as to who should be appointed to senior posts in the judiciary.

"I am here to stress that there is nothing to stop the prime minister from receiving suggestions from any parties. Should anyone act to advise the prime minister on the appointment of judges, this act itself cannot be taken as an offence.

"Unless it's clear that the action (by Lingam) was clearly aimed at conspiring to subvert the judiciary or made to get favours... (but) the findings of the commission found none of this," said the minister.

Opposition MPs had during the debate session demanded answers as to why the Attorney-General had decided to take “no further action” towards Lingam despite the findings of a royal commission set up to probe the infamous “correct, correct, correct” video recording that allegedly saw the senior lawyer brokering the appointment of judges.

The royal commission had proposed that action be taken against Lingam and several others purportedly involved in the recording including former Chief Justice Tun Eusoff Chin, Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim and tycoon Tan Sri Vincent Tan, a close friend of former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Nazri revealed that investigations by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on the figures named also found no conclusive evidence that there was any form of power abuse by any of them.

His remarks invited scathing criticism from the opposition benches.

Shah Alam PAS MP Khalid Samad blasted Nazri's reply as ridiculous, calling it clear proof that the government was half-hearted in its efforts to reform the judiciary.

Khalid's assault, however, was deflected cynically by Nazri who merely called the Shah Alam MP "deaf".

"I told you not to put the receiver close to your ears when you use your mobile phone, you become deaf," he said, claiming Khalid had missed his earlier statement that the government had taken action to reform the judiciary.

"But it will take time before results can be seen," he added.

Bukit Gelugor DAP MP Karpal Singh said what had transpired in the recording was tantamount to sedition as it had brought the country's judiciary into disrepute and Lingam, he suggested, could be charged under the Sedition Act.

The minister, in his reply, said the commission had also suggested the same and that he welcomed the proposal made by Karpal but did not state if the government planned to adopt the proposal.

Nazri's remarks today have added to the confusion surrounding the Lingam controversy.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had said on Oct 29 that the case was still under investigation by MACC.

“The investigation in relation to V.K. Lingam’s video case is still under investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the police are no longer handling the case,” he said in a written reply to Wangsa Maju MP Wee Choo Keong.

But Nazri had, in a written reply to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng a week before Hishammuddin's statement, said that no action would be taken against Lingam.

He had said Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail had found “no case” against the senior lawyer.

Nazri had explained that he never said that the case was closed and blamed the media for misinterpreting his words.

[Source : MI]

Geronimo's Take : Wah, if Lingam is so good in acting, as claimed by Nazri, then Lingam is in the wrong profession. He should be in Bollywood earning his keeps other than being a KPC [kay poh chee] trying to be a "judiciary fixer". If Nazri can call Khalid Samad "deaf", then he himself must be "blind" as it was so clear on the video that it looks like Lingam, sounds like Lingam and yes, it was definitely Lingam. Nazri can spin all he wants to prove the innocence of Lingam but the court of public opinion thinks otherwise.

Monday Humour

You are a train driver and your train is travelling 120 kph downhill, and there infront, sitting on the track .......... What would you do?

You are a cobbler. This customer wants her shoes to be polished. Will you still be polishing the shoes or losing your concentration ...... Crap!!!

[Pictures: Maverick]

========================================

Except for the last joke, these are excerpts from a book called "Disorder in the American Courts", and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
____________ _________ _________ _________ ____

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________ _________ _________ _________ ____

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
____________ _________ _________ _________ ____

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
____________ _________ _________ _________ ___

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year- old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid.
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
____________ _________ _________ ______

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
____________ _________ _________ ________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them.. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

ATTORNEY : And do you mind telling the court which year you finished high school?

WITNESS: Oral

ATTORNEY: ???
____________ _________ _________ _________ __

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________ _________ _________ _________ ____

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
____________ _________ _________ ______________

And the best for last. Dr PR from Thailand being cross-examined

by a lawyer from the A-G's office (AGR) . Of course, it is just fictitious.

AGR: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
DR PR: No.
AGR: Did you check for blood pressure?
DR PR: No.
AGR: Did you check for breathing?
DR PR: No.
AGR: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
DR PR: No.
AGR: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
DR PR: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
AGR: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
DR PR: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive, revealing to me how he was murdered and considering practicing law too.