WHAT NAJIB NEEDS TO STAY OUT OF JAIL – A PROSECUTOR WHO LIKES THIEVES & KLEPTOCRATS: IS THAT WHAT MALAYSIA’S EX-PM IS SAYING?

I did not realize that in order to get a fair trial in this country you need to have a prosecutor who likes you. This is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing.

So if you are a rapist and you find out that the prosecutor has once spoken at a conference saying that rapists are bad, then he cannot prosecute you.

This is exactly what the ex-Prime Minister is saying.

He is arguing that because the AG Tommy Thomas does not like him, by virtue of an article he wrote about the 1MDB a few years ago, this means he is not fit to prosecute because he is more likely to charge him.

I do not know if this line of reasoning is something that Najib came up with by himself or whether his hot shot lawyer designed this argument but either way it is seriously flawed. I am sure many prosecutors in the past did not like the persons they are charging. This makes no difference to the justice system because at the end of the day he or she is not the judge. No matter how much you don’t like someone, if your case is weak, then you will lose.

Maybe Najib and his lawyers will only be happy if the prosecutor, defence lawyers and the judges are only those who have proven that they like him.

And of course the Umno folk are milking this kind of thing to the max. All to make the PM look like a sad little victim. Not only is he a victim but he is poor victim as he has no money and need to survive on donations just to get his bail. I would have thought he would have had enough of donations considering how much trouble the last “donation” he received caused him, but I guess some people never learn.

Umno youth appear to be learning. They say they want to be a better opposition than the last opposition. This is because according to them they will deal with facts and not emotion like the previous opposition. This sounds impressive until you remember that in the past the opposition were actually prevented from discussing things by the Speaker, whether based on fact or not.

This brings us to the question of the speaker. I certainly hope that Rais Yatim is not chosen as the rumours suggest. I don’t see what he could bring to add to the value of parliament which is one of the PH’s manifesto. According to our Constitution, anyone who can qualify as an MP (even though they are not an actual MP), can be the Speaker. This being the case the field to choose one is very broad. Is there seriously no one else? Someone who is free from any association with the old regime?

WRITER: Azmi Sharom is a law lecturer at Universiti Malaya

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