Does one person acting alone have the capacity to defraud a nation?

 It is a travesty of justice to suggest that it was possible to conduct a grand-scale national scam without active accomplices across different communities.

Drawing upon Lord Denning’s advocacy of common sense in judicial decisions – alongside my own worldly and judicial experience in Malaysia, rooted in my origins in Thopputhurai, Vedaranyam, Tamil Nadu, India – I will state bluntly: no person operating in isolation possesses the capacity to defraud a nation on a scale that attracts universal infamy without the active assistance of a wider network.

When I sat as a judge, I treated common sense as my primary guiding principle when interpreting the Federal Constitution, the law and the facts of any case. It was strictly through this practical approach that I developed the oath of office jurisprudence as well as the concept of university-cum-court annexed arbitration.

Applying common sense

With his 38-year career on the English bench, Denning earned the title of “the people’s judge”. At the heart of his jurisprudence was a simple, powerful conviction: the law is neither an abstract puzzle for academics nor a rigid trap for ordinary citizens.

Instead, he advocated, judges and lawyers must apply practical common sense to achieve real justice when interpreting both statutes and facts.

Among his many judgments grounded in common sense, I was particularly guided by his approach in Butler Machine Tool Co Ltd v Ex-Cell-O Corp (England) Ltd.

In resolving commercial contract disputes, Denning advocated looking at the entirety of the documents to determine what a sensible businessperson would understand, rather than applying rigid, artificial formulas.

In modern jurisprudence

Regarding the SRC International case, I have previously written that, among other critical issues, Najib Razak was deprived of procedural fairness and his constitutional right to counsel. Common sense dictates that procedural fairness is a core pillar of the criminal justice system and our constitutional framework.

Furthermore, it is a fallacy for certain commentators to circulate articles suggesting that a single Malay individual could orchestrate a massive fraud against the nation entirely on his own without the involvement of non-Malay enablers and professionals.

In my view, it is a travesty of justice to paint a picture suggesting that one person possessed the solitary capability to execute a grand-scale national scam without the active participation of accomplices across different communities. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT