Dzaiddin says the press can criticise the judiciary "within limits". He admits there has to be a "cleaning-up". No one talks about the past, but how he says hw would go about it says it all: restoring the judiciary's image, putting the judicial house in order, improve the functioning of justice. Indeed, no judicial appointment has been as welcome as his. He was not the Prime Minister's choice, who would have preferred the outgoing Attorney-General, Mohtar Abdullah, a former High Court Judge.

But when her first interview with the Press after her appointment is one she should not have, it throws doubts. We have been taken for a ride for too long that she should have ignored the niceties and address the task in hand. If she was not ready for it, she should not have talked to the press. When her remarks are read together with what the new chief justice, Tan Sri Dzaiddin Abdullah, said, her remarks are way off. She probably is still reeling from shock at her appointment. She was not the first choice. I know of two prominent Malay lawyers who rejected offers because it meant being subservient to the government in a blatant way. There could well have been others. A High Court Judge certainly was considered. So, she is chosen in a form of Buggin's turn.

So, when Tan Sri Dzaiddin Abdullah succeeds Tun Eusoff on 20 December 00, he inherits a judiciary fallen on bad times by its own efforts. Justice is for sale. Business men get the decisions they want by the right choice of lawyers, those like Dato' Lingam, whose friendship with Tun Eusoff is a high blown scandal. The Vincent Tan case is but one example. But could Tan Sri Dzaiddin clear the judicial Augean stables? No. It is beyond him in the less than two years he would be in office. All he can hope to do, and if he succeeds he would have the eternal gratitude of all who seeks justice in the Malaysian courts, is to begin to set matters right. For Tun Eusoff gathered around him judges not for their erudition, judicial temperament or knowledge of the law but for their personal loyalty to him. One is appointed a judge because he was master to one V.K. Lingam, when he was chambering. It is fair to say that several believed they could get merit by wallowing in the corruption the chief did. So, the High Court Judge, Dato' Mokhtar Sidin, allows a lawyer to write the judgement to favour his client, is immediately promoted to the court of appeal and, but for the principled refusal of the conference of rulers, would be in the federal court and, possibly, chief justice now.

As convention demands, he submitted three names -- Tan Sri Dzaiddin, Tan Sri Mohtar, and federal court judge, Dato' Fairuz Sheikh Halim. Tan Sri Dzaiddin is the most senior of the federal court judges, while Tan Sri Mohtar resigned as High Court Judge to be Attorney-General in a judicial musical chair. There appears to have been a promise, or expectation, that if he behaved himself, he would eventually leapfrog into the chief justice's chair. Like every institution of state in the country, the Prime Minsiter decided to have the judiciary eat out of his hand, demanding loyalty to be proven with decisions which back him. There is nothing in black and white about it, but the speed with which those who disagreed with him were removed was sufficient warning to adjudicate as they thought he wanted.

And so, according to latest rumours, the Rulers would consider four names -- one Court of Appeal and three High Court Judges -- for promotion to the Federal Court when they meet next week. The man who, despite his judicial sleights of hand and behaviour, has a brilliant legal mind, Judge Gopal Sri Ram, is not favoured anymore. But Judge Mokhtar Sidin -- who in the Vincent Tan libel case allowed the plaintiff's lawyer, Dato' V.K. Lingam, to write the judgement giving him a total of RM10 million in damges even if neither libel nor damages were proved -- is. The inclusion of three High Court Judges raises judicial and legal eyebrows. Why should it? If kindergarten children can get double promotion, as the much-vaunted, ill-thought-out vision schools allow, why should not High Court Judges to the federal court? After all, the Malaysian judiciary has a more serious problem with judicial libido than dispense justice. If a man faces a prominent business man in court, he cannot succeed. The court would find creative reasons to damn him. This is so ingrained that few would rather opt to have disputes arbitrated. Indeed, in almost every contract involving foreign investment or investors, disputes are by arbitration overseas, usually in Singapore. So much for the integrity of Bolehland justice.

When workers at the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur picketed, roundly abusing their Sikh supervisor in placards and vocally. He applied for an injunction to prevent his name abused. It, in due court, was heard. The High Court Judge wanted to know if the man was present. He was, in the public gallery. His Lordship told court reporters what he was about to say should not be reported, turned to the man's lawyer and barked: "Do you know who this man is? I will tell you who he is!" He was, by then, at a finely-tuned pitch of ire. In open court, he deliberately and incessantly defamed the man, describing him as "the Bhai fellow", making clear he deserves perdition, not justice. The lawyers present in court are shell-shocked by this gross judicial breach of etiquette. But then why should they when such judicial behaviour does not occur as often.

The MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu's son, Mr Paari Vellu, throws a birthday bash for his daughter at Kshipra's, his mother's restaurant in Brickfields. The road was chocker-block with high-end Mercedes Benzes and other baubles of the self-important and rentier-seekers. To this august gathering is invited one High Court Judge, the only one, so he told the court, not from the MIC. Judge R.K. Nathan turns up though he sits in judgement in a defamation action the MIC brought against a newspaper. He reasons nothing untoward had happened, since he left almost immediately on seeing the crowd. He had thought it a small function that loving parents hold for their first born. No doubt he was more than surprised to learn that Mr Paari Vellu's father is the president of the MIC! And it dawned on him only when he arrived. Since he left immediately, judicial decorum is preserved, his ire directed at the newspapers for reporting the event and his presence.

One High Court Judges known for his voluminous judgements, often on the most inconsequential of matters, was irritably upset recently when neither counsel appearing before him had not heard of an unreported judgement of his. He had made his views known then, and upbraided the counsel for not referring to it. Horror of horrors, neither had heard of his landmark decision of the law. Nor had the law reports, which bend over backwards to report the most mundane court cases. One counsel had referred to another, though reported, judgement which contradicted the judge's. Horror of horrors, even in the reported case, the counsel had not heard of His Lordship's decision. Counsel present in court, even in these parlous times when they can go to prison for contempt for not pandering to the judge's self-imposed dignity, could not contain their laughter, suitably suppressed with handkerchiefs over their mouths. That in the Malaysian system of justice is even worse than shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre. But the judge's threat to "deal" with the two counsel who did not refer to his unreported judgement in the earlier case is dismissed, rightly, as the obiter dictum of a self-important but presumed legal mind.

Into this exchange, this "international business man of unquestioned repute" (IBOUR) -- if you would rather believe what his counsel thinks of him -- or "Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Dato' Seri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun" (YBTSDSVTCY) -- in his solicitor's considered view -- decides his satrap Big Chief Injustice needs his help. So he cocks a snook at the government, the dispenser of his patronage, and a day after Dato' Seri Rais' defamation concerns, he goes in for the kill. He instructs his solicitors, Messrs Adam Bachek & (sic) Associates, to demand his Shylockian pound of flesh, the one Dato' Rais was concerned about, demands the RM2,000,000 the federal court awarded in a case in which his counsel wrote part or all of the High Court Judgement, went on holidays with Big Chief Injustice and his bodyguard, and argued the Federal Court appeal before him. Tun Eusoff further strengthened his well-honed injustice when he insisted upon delivering the judgement after my counsel had wanted him recused for his biasness, after insisting there would be three separate judgements, and assuring the Bar Council a few months later and two years before a court flunky delivered judgement on his behalf. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Well that describes IBOUR YBTSDSVTCY perfectly. However, he looks at it, this demand for monopoly money misses the point.

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