Tuesday, 04 October 2011 02:37
Written by Maclean Patrick, Wong Choon Mei, Malaysia Chronicle
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Prime Minister Najib Razak, despite splurging several dozen millions of taxpayers' money hiring Tony Blair's former media team to remake his somewhat shady image into a 'Mr Cool', may soon find himself melting in the sweltering heat of the French open courts.
"The Ops Scorpene dinner talk at Holborn Uni went really well. Lawyer Joseph Breham announced that the instruction judge is on the verge of being appointed," Suaram director Cynthia Gabriel said on Twitter at end of the Sept 30 fundraiser in London that was closely followed back home.
"Mr Cool is going to face the heat very soon! Ops Scorpene's legal briefing in Holborn was told that the case will open very soon in France."
No, Breham did not disppoint those who came to get the latest update on how the probe against French arms giant DCN was getting on. According to Cynthia, the legal briefing was streamed live and avidly followed by Malaysians in Australia despite it being at an "unearthly hour for them".
Suaram had in 2010 filed a complaint in Paris against DCN, accusing it of paying kickbacks to Malaysian officials including Najib to secure the deal. It has held several dinner talks to raise the legal fees needed to bring the case to open court.
Inquisitorial system
And now, the stage is finally set and the grand drama involving DCN, Najib, his close friend Razak Baginda and the beautiful but tragic Altantuya Shaariibuu about to begin.
The Parisian courts would obviously follow the French legal system which is different from the Malaysian one that is based on the British legal code. In France, an instructional judge or an investigating judge is part of the inquisitorial system that France practices in its courts of law.
This is a legal system where the court or a part of the court is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case, as opposed to an adversarial system where the role of the court is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense. Inquisitorial systems are used in some countries with civil legal systems as opposed to common law systems.
The main feature of the inquisitorial system in criminal justice in France and other countries functioning along the same lines is the function of the examining or investigating judge (juge d'instruction). The examining judge conducts investigations into serious crimes or complex enquiries. As members of the judiciary, they are independent and outside the province of the executive branch, and therefore separate from the Office of Public Prosecutions which is supervised by the Minister of Justice.
An investigating judge holds great authority in the search for evidence. The judge questions witnesses, interrogates suspects, and orders searches for other investigations. The examining judge's goal is not to prosecute the accused, but to gather facts, and as such their duty is to look for any and all evidence (à charge et à décharge), incriminating or exculpatory.
Such a system of independent examination will no doubt trouble Najib. He already has to contend with going into an election year with declining popularity points, a divided UMNO party as well as being on the receiving end of a 'nosy' judge in France over a bombshell of a corruption case with murder thrown in to boot!
Abusing the Malaysian system
With such burdens to bear, it is small wonder that influential former premier Mahathir Mohamad has restated his earlier claim that if snap elections were to be held now - which pundits take to mean the November date that is being widely touted around town - the UMNO-led BN coalitionwill lose GE-13.Although, Mahathir did not mention the ongoing Scorpenes probe, the Altantuya muder case nor the Sodomy II trial in which Najib and wife Rosmah Mansor are also implicated, he made it obvious that Najib has become a liability to UMNO and BN.
Despite Mahathir's misgivings, Najib probably reckons he can control the news flow and clean up after the bad publicity. For sure, he can influence the Altantuya and Sodomy II cases in Malaysia, but he cannot do anything about the Scorpenes because that probe is in France and way out of his reach. And this is why he is such a walking time-bomb for his party, even though he refuses to admit it.
Sodomy II relates to the accusation that he had conspired with Anwar Ibrahim's former aide Saiful Bukhari Azlan to frame the Opposition Leader for sodomy, which is illegal in Malaysia, for the purpose of derailing his arch enemy's political comeback. Indeed, all eyes are now on how the Malaysian court will rule in his application to set aside a subpoena for himself and Rosmah to appears as witnessnes in the trial.
Indeed, it is hard to see how the Kuala Lumpur High Court can rule that Najib is not a relevant since he had met Saiful and even advised him to lodge a police complaint against Anwar two days before Saiful claimed he was again sodomised,. As Anwar's counsel has said, Najib can shed light on Saiful's mental state and his testimony would be crucial for Anwar's defense. But then the lines separating the judiciarry from the executive in Malaysia are very much blurred compared to France.
The same goes for the Altantuya murder. The 28-year-old Mongolian translator travelled widely with Baginda during his negotiations with DCN in the early 2000s, and it has been alleged that Najib, who as the Defense minister in 2002 had sanctioned the submarines purchase, had also travelled with them. Altantuya was murdered by two of Najib's former bodyguards in 2006. Her parents filed a RM100 million lawsuit against the Malaysian government in 2007, while the bodyguards have appealed their 2009 death sentence.
However, both cases remain mysteriously submerged despite countless queries in Parliament as to their status. One excuse after another has been offered by the Attorney General's chambers as well as the Chief Justice, but few in Malaysia are fooled by the delay. They see a sinister hand of intereference in both cases and it is a fair and easy guess whose hand it is that might be pulling the strings behind the scenes.
But France is out of Najib's reach
But in France, apart from establishing if DCN had really bribed Najib and other Malaysian officials to seal the deal, the Scorpenes hearing is likely to rake up a lot of details that would shed light on the Altantuya murder. This could pave the way for her murder case to be re-opene
Additionally, and this significance is only just beginning to dawn on corporate Malaysia, is how impactful the Scorpenes hearing will be.
The huge web of corruption and illicit wheeling and dealing amongst firms connected to the procurement of arms by the Defense ministry is bound to be unravelled. Many corporate bigwigs sitting on these Defense-linked firms, and also holding positions in other major companies, will be implicated.
It is a cinch that an entire chain reaction will be set off that could shake the business sector and force a revamp in the way the BN government has erstwhile intertwined politics with big-time business.
No wonder Mahathir is sure that his UMNO will "lose big" if elections are held soon!
Malaysia Chronicle
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