Whistle-blower’s letter puts MACC on trial
Anak Bangsa Malaysia
The inquest into Teoh Beng Hock’s death was getting to be boring. Many witnesses were called, but there was no earth-shaking revelation or definitive discovery.
Experts came and went, ho-humming with theories and speculations, and the impossible possibility that Teoh had committed suicide. It looked for a while as if the inquest was just the type of officious motion that would lead nowhere.
The lovely thing about being a Malaysian is that once in a long while, a pleasant surprise springs upon you when you least expect it. One such surprise was the political tsunami in March last year.
Earlier this week, another surprise was sprung upon unsuspecting Malaysians. Lawyer Gobind Singh Deo submitted a mysterious letter to magistrate Azmil Mustapha Abas who is acting as the coroner in the inquest. After reading the five-page letter, the magistrate ordered the police investigating officer ASP Ahmad Asri Zainal to look into matters raised in the letter immediately, and the court was adjourned.
The Internet was abuzz with all kinds of speculations regarding the content of this mysterious letter written in by an anonymous person. Apparently it was sent to quite a few persons including some members of parliament. Despite some dispute over whether the magistrate had imposed a gag order on the letter, it was impossible for it to remain a secret for long.
Sure enough, we had to wait for the indomitable Raja Petra Kamarudin to post the content of the letter on his website Malaysia Today. Within hours, it was translated into English and Chinese, and went the round in cyberspace like wild fire. The comments that exploded on blogs and websites was nothing less than deafening.
Writers claim to be MACC officers
We all know anonymous letters are seldom taken seriously in Malaysia. They are mostly malicious poison-pen letters written out of spite for certain individuals by throwing all kinds of unsubstantiated allegations against them. The common thinking is that if a person is afraid of putting his name in a letter he writes, then there is no credibility to the claims in his letter.
But the mysterious letter that surfaced in Teoh’s inquest is different. It is written with a MACC letterhead by writers who claim to be MACC officers who cannot tolerate the corruption and abuse of power within their organisation. The style of writing and the tone of the voice suggest no malice at all, but plenty of anguish for justice to be done. This looks like a whistle-blower’s letter.
A whistle-blower is one who blows the whistle on wrongdoings by individuals and a group of people within his organisation. The term is derived from the practice of the English cops called “Bobbies”, whenever they discover the commission of a crime in public places, to alert other law-enforcement officers and members of the public.
In 2007, we have our own famous whistle-blower Mohamad Abdul Ramli Manan, the former ACA Sabah chief. Just prior to his retirement, he made the explosive revelation about allegations of massive corruption and sexual assault by his boss, the ACA chief Zukipli Mat Nor. Malaysiakini carried his allegations and broke the story to the world.
The police grilled him for 10 hours but nothing seemed to have been done after that. A Parliamentary Select Committee set up to investigate both Zukipli and Ramli was called off. Until today, I cannot recall whether the case was indeed investigated thoroughly during those days before the political tsunami in 2008. That episode probably had something with the setting up of the MACC to replace the old ACA.
Upon his retirement, Ramli discovered to his dismay that the government had held back his pension and other benefits, and he had to make ends meet by working part-time in a law firm. He did sue the government for what he claimed was rightfully his. Can somebody tell me whether he has been successful in his court battle? We Malaysians do have such short memory.
