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NST EDITORIAL: Redemption or retribution? |
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Posted by admin
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Friday, 13 June 2008 10:55 |
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"WHERE do you stop?" asked Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, in response to calls for a commission of inquiry into judge Datuk Ian Chin's open-court revelations of alleged executive interference in the judiciary under the previous administration.
Judging by Karpal Singh's police report against Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, that would depend on where you want to go. The minister in the Prime Minister's Department speaks of moving forward towards judicial rehabilitation; the opposition stalwart wants to go back to seek judicial redressal. This is the dichotomy at the heart of this matter.
Chin's statement at the Sibu High Court last Monday merely added to the overburden laid by the V.K. Lingam video clip, the import and implications of which were subject to a commission of inquiry. The commission upheld the veracity of the video clip and affirmed the identities of the individuals involved. With that, the situations alleged by Chin would merely substantiate the impressions arising from the Lingam episode, achieving nothing further than a restatement of what was so desperately wrong with the system in the wake of the judges' sacking in 1988.
Rectifying the damage has been de facto Law Minister Zaid's mission since his appointment to the brief. The ex-gratia payments to the judges and their families, the earnest re-engagement with the Bar Council; the determination now to reinstate Article 121 of the Federal Constitution on judicial independence -- all speak to a need to rectify and restore the judiciary. What Zaid is up against, however, includes the sentiment that atonement for the past is required before turning to the future.
This is a primal impulse: the association of justice with retribution. In this view, exonerating the blameless without punishing the guilty renders both concepts meaningless. Police reports, court hearings and commissions of inquiry would serve to assign blame and determine guilt. What then? Karpal has mentioned the two-year custodial sentence allowed for transgressing Section 186 of the Penal Code, on obstructing public officials from discharging their duties. Whatever satisfaction may reside in successful prosecution of such a case, how would it help the overarching imperative of judicial restoration? This debate will likely continue. In a sense, all this is turning out to conduce to what Zaid advocates. Stripping the screens from the past sheds light on the way forward for the institution of the judiciary. Prosecuting individuals, however, would be but a sordid sideshow parading what went wrong on the pretext of putting it right.
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