GOPAL SRI RAM: A TECHNICOLOURED CHAMELEON

K.S. Lee

It has been revealed by Anwar Ibrahim that Gopal Sri Ram himself approached Anwar requesting to act as defence lawyer. Those in the legal fraternity who know the ex-Judge well would vouch that such a move could not have been motivated by any altruistic motive.

Having Sri Ram on the team suited the Anwar camp, and perhaps helped assuage some of the anxieties they have been having facing Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, as evidenced by the numerous times the Anwar camp tried to bar his appearance through legal means and through the pro-opposition media.

Sri Ram has had a very colourful and checkered career. He started his legal career in private practice. He shot to prominence, or some would say to notoriety, when he represented the Mahathir team in 1987 over the UMNO crisis in the aftermath of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s challenge of Mahathir for the UMNO presidency. It is said his brief was to prevent a  re-election between Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh, which he did. UMNO was declared illegal and deregistered. And Sri Ram had wormed his way into the good books of Mahathir and the government.

Not surprisingly, Sri Ram’s rise was meteoric! He was appointed directly to the Court of Appeal, not having served as a Judicial Commissioner or High Court Judge.

Soon after his appointment, his wife Chandra Sri Ram sued the International School of Kuala Lumpur for dropping her 17 year old son, Govind Sri Ram, from the school debating team and sought a whopping sum of RM6 Million as damages. The case was settled by both parties.

Not satisfied, Chandra Sri Ram went on to sue Murray Hiebert, the Far Eastern Economic Review journalist, for a critical article of the incident entitled “See you in court”. No prize for guessing who was Hiebert’s lawyer! Yes, none other than Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.

The case received much criticism internationally from Amnesty International and Journalist groups for an attempt to curtail freedom of expression. Even the then US President, Bill Clinton, wrote a protest letter to the Prime Minister when Hiebert was imprisoned.

Hiebert was the first journalist to be sent to jail in Malaysia for contempt of court for his article; and first journalist in a Commonwealth country in 50 years.

It is alleged that the main reason this case was brought to court was because Chandra Sri Ram was slighted because the article portrayed her as a “petty vindictive woman”.

Malaysians would not have forgotten Sri Ram was the judge who was responsible for sending Lim Eng Guan to jail for 18 months, having found him guilty of sedition. Lim had spoken out in the case of Rahim Tamby Chik who was alleged to have raped a 15-year old girl.

Another controversial decision was in favour of the Bakum Dam when he overturned the decision of fellow judge Datuk James Foong who had ruled the project as detrimental to the environment.

Then there was a turn in his pro-government stance. For example the Mertramac case. His judgement was set aside by the Federal Court, citing judgement bias.

Further some of his statements from the bench against the litigants and others, particularly against Daim Zainuddin who was not Minister of Finance at the material time was expunged.

Sri Ram also has the rare distinction of having unsuccessfully sued his former partner V.Vijaya Kumar and seven others in a dispute over a collection of law books and journals, while he was still a Federal Court judge. It was a bitter and acrimonius tussle between Sri Ram and his former partner, and given wide publicity in the press.

Professor Aziz Bari (in The Ant Daily) interprets Sri Ram’s change of his pro-government stance and his later controversial decisions as a result of unhappiness at being by-passed for promotion to the Federal Court. He further states it may also be due to the fact he wants to be remembered more kindly in his obituary.

Sri Ram’s unhappiness at being by-passed as claimed by the learned professor is to a certain extent borne out by the fact that the issue of Sri Ram’s promotion was raised in Parliament by DAP MP Kulasingam, a few years back.

Ironically, Sri Ram in his last judgement in the Federal Court (having got his promotion) stressed that “judges must always bear in mind the justice of a case when deciding to grant postponement of a trial…’’ He emphasised  the need for good grounds for postponing a trial.

Now, Sri Ram has chosen not to heed his own advice and has chosen to represent a man who sought to postpone his case 67 times! What a turnabout, good ex-judge!