23 May, 2009
But they refuse to allow it to end there. They refuse to acknowledge that they can’t get me in spite of bending the rules and moving the goalposts so many times halfway through the trial. This is no longer even a kangaroo court. They have set new standards for what a kangaroo court should look like.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Today, Hafidz Baharom’s piece ‘Why I don't respect RPK’ was published in The Star. Once upon a time, The Star used to be known as ‘Suara Tunku Abdul Rahman’ -- when it was then merely a regional newspaper for Penang folks. Now, of course, it is better known as Suara MCA and has since been transformed into a national newspaper.
Back in the early 1990s, I too used to write for The Star. At that time I was just a freelance columnist writing for the Cycling, and later, Motorcycling columns in The Weekender. The Weekender’s editor then was Sharifah Intan. I think she is the Tunku’s granddaughter but I never did ask her.
Hafidz echoes what many Umno types have repeatedly said: berani kerana benar. What he means is: I have lied. So I should be man enough to face the music and walk into jail with my head held up high. First of all, they assume I have lied. Secondly, since I have lied, then I should suffer a sham trial and accept the verdict of a kangaroo court and go quietly to jail.
Okay, let us focus on that one issue for the meantime. We can always talk about the other issues later.
The issue they raise is: I have lied. Since the court has not ruled either way just yet, let us assume, therefore, that I have. And we will give them the benefit of the doubt and agree that I have lied. I shall not dispute that. And this means I need to go to court so that the court can rule whether I did or did not lie.
I have no problems with that. In fact, in the beginning, that was what my sedition trial was all about. Superintendent Gan made a police report against me alleging that I had lied. And I was arrested and charged for sedition because it is said I had lied. And I faced trial and defended myself against the allegation that I had lied.
Then Gan was called to testify. He was not my witness but the prosecution’s witness. And he went into great detail relating how he arrived at the conclusion that I had lied -- and which was why he made that police report against me.
It was an open and shut case. Raja Petra Bin Raja Kamarudin lied in that article he wrote. So Gan was forced to make a police report against me. He was the investigating officer in the Altantuya murder. He knows the full details of the murder investigation. And he therefore knows very well that what I wrote are total lies.
Then it came to our turn to cross-examin him. He had already testified for the prosecution. Now it was our turn to cross-examin him on his testimony he gave the prosecution.
And that was when he changed his story.
No, he did not investigate the Altantuya murder after all. Another person did. So he is not that knowledgeable about the details of the murder investigation. He just knows small patches of the investigation.
Okay, but he said I had lied. Which parts of that article were the lies? My lawyer went through the article and identified four (4) paragraphs where, according to Gan’s police report, I was supposed to have lied. Okay, now let us look at the charge. The charge says seven (7) paragraphs contain lies. But only three (3) of the seven (7) tally with the three (3) of the four (4) that Gan had identified. This means there is one paragraph that does not tally. So, Gan has four, the charge says seven, and there is one where Gan and the prosecutor can’t agree whether is a lie or not.
The next step is to try to establish the truth. Only by establishing the truth can the lies be established. Since I was alleged to have lied, let us then seek the truth and only when we know the truth can it be proven whether I had lied or not.
But when Gan was asked about the truth he refused to reply to YB Gobind’s questions. He would just not reveal what was the truth. Each time he was asked a question he replied he does not know or does not know how to answer or does not know what to say.
How then does he know I had lied when he does not know what is the truth? Well, he came to the conclusion that I had lied because he had never stumbled across what I had written before. This means, if I were to write that female mosquitoes bite humans while male mosquitoes feed on fruits and not on blood, since he had never stumbled across this fact before, this means I must be lying. There are no two ways about it.
YB Gobind then goes through the article, paragraph by paragraph. He reads each paragraph and asks Gan where in that paragraph are the lies. Then it is discovered that Gan was not able to tell the court where the lies were. In short, what he initially thought to be lies were in fact not.
How did Gan then come to the conclusion they were lies when he made that police report, but when testifying on the stand he can’t stand by his allegation that I had lied? And remember, his police report said I had lied and that I had committed sedition because I had lied.
At this point, when it became clear that the prosecution’s case against me on the basis that I had committed a crime of sedition because I had lied appeared to be falling apart, the prosecutor stood up and told the court that the truth of the matter, or otherwise, is not important. Sedition has nothing to do with true or false. It would be seditious and therefore a crime even if I had told the truth.
But Gan’s police report and testimony were very clear. It was based on the fact that I was supposed to have lied. Now that the lie allegation can no longer stand, they want the court to forget about the lying part and focus on whether I did write what I was alleged to have written even if it is true. And even if it is true they still want the court to send me to jail.
To add insult to injury, the prosecution wants the court to ignore the four or seven paragraphs and whether one paragraph does not tally between the police report and the charge. The article, the court was told, has to be looked at in its entirety, not based on four paragraphs or seven paragraphs.
But the police report clearly marked four paragraphs. And it was these four paragraphs that constituted my so-called crime. The charge, on the other hand, marked seven paragraphs. And this was why I was on trial. Now they want the court to agree that all these paragraphs are no longer relevant and instead the article must be seen as a whole, minus the marked paragraphs.
Okay, the court was told, forget about whether I had lied or in fact had told the truth. Forget the police report. Forget even the charge. Let us just look at the article. Did I or did I not write that article? That is all that matters. And if I did then I must be sent to jail.
Fine, let us do just that. Let us forget about whether I had lied or in fact had told the truth. Let us forget the police report. Let us even forget the charge. Let us instead just look at the article. Did I or did I not write that article? That will be the focus.
The prosecution then adduced the article. This, according to the prosecution, was the article I was alleged to have written. And this article was downloaded from the website called Malaysia Today.
Then it was discovered that the article was NOT downloaded from Malaysia Today. It was in fact typed out. This means this was not the original evidence. It was created or fabricated and NOT downloaded from Malaysia Today. For all intents and purposes, I did not write that article. They, the prosecution, wrote that article. It is a copy. It is not an original article download from Malaysia Today.
When they realised that it was game over, they asked for a postponement so that they could amend the charge. The new charge, this time around, will have the real article downloaded from Malaysia Today.
Then they read out the new charge. But the new charge also had a fabricated article. It DID NOT have the original article downloaded from Malaysia Today. So, again, they were stuck. And at this point the court should have just acquitted me without the necessity of my defence having to be called because the charge was clearly defective and the evidence had been fabricated.
But they refused to give up. Instead, again, they applied for a postponement so that they can do a SECOND examination of the computer. They already did one examination but could not find any copy of that article. The article just did not exist. That is why they had to fabricate the evidence -- because they could not find the evidence.
And why did they need to do a SECOND examination of my computer? So that they could prove that I had used the computer to update the website. This would be the evidence to prove I had published the article.
At this point they were asked how, in the first place, did they even know that the computer belongs to me? Well, because it was confiscated from my house. Am I living in that house alone? No! When they raided my house there were other people there as well. Then how do they know that I own that computer? They don’t, they just assume.
In fact, they confiscated TWO computers and one of them actually belongs to someone else and the files in it prove this. But when they confiscated the two computers they never asked me whether I owned those computers and I never said that I did. So who owns those two computers? The police do not know.
They then summoned an IT expert to testify. They wanted the IT expert to testify that the computers the police had confiscated were used to update Malaysia Today on the day the article was published. The IT expert, however, testified that the computers never accessed Malaysia Today on the day in question. In fact, many days before the alleged crime was committed, the computers they confiscated never accessed the Internet at all, let alone Malaysia Today.
So there goes their case against me. They confiscated two computers that they can’t prove belong to me. Even if the computers do belong to me, they were never used to publish the offending article. In fact, there is no copy of that article in the two computers so there is no evidence I had even written it in the first place. They can’t prove that I lied. They are no longer interested whether I lied or not because they can’t prove that I lied. So where do they go from there? And why are they still pursuing their case against me when they no longer have a case?
Not willing to admit that they no longer have a case, the prosecution told the court they still have many witnesses to call. Okay, they are supposed to tell the court before the trial starts who they are calling as witnesses. How many NEW witnesses are they calling and who are they? They don’t know yet. They are still figuring it out and will inform the court later once they have decided.
Yes, berani kerana benar, all these people say. If I am benar, then I must be berani to face the court. Hey, I did. I did just that; I faced the court. And I allowed them to build their case against me. I allowed them to get to the truth so that they can establish that I had committed the crime of lying and therefore I am seditious. But they failed to do so, each step of the way. And each time they failed they asked for a postponement so that they could go back to the drawing board and come out with new charges, new witnesses, new testimony, new evidence, new rules of the game, and whatnot. And, still, they failed to nail me.
But they refuse to allow it to end there. They refuse to acknowledge that they can’t get me in spite of bending the rules and moving the goalposts so many times halfway through the trial. This is no longer even a kangaroo court. They have set new standards for what a kangaroo court should look like.
Yes, berani kerana benar. I berani walk away from this sham trial and tell them to go to hell kerana benar. And I beranikerana benar. And I berani say to their faces: no more bullshit. And I berani tell them I refuse to allow them to detain me, yet again, under the Internal Security Act. And I berani do all this kerana I benar. And I will not lose any sleep over the matter just because Hafidz Baharom does not respect me and challenges me with berani kerana benar. face the warrant of arrest they have issued for not turning up in court
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