Someone called me a liar

You see, I may not be a lawyer, but I do know how the law works. Any statement by a third party that you repeat becomes hearsay and hence is not admissible in court. You cannot make an allegation based on what someone told you. It must be based on what you yourself heard and/or saw. In this case I was NOT at the scene of the crime. Hence, by law, I cannot make any allegation when I was not there and did not see or hear what happened.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Sorry to prick your gloat balloon. I do recall that you once declared Rosmah was there when Altantuya was C4ed. That was a lie and you corrected yourself sometime later. Nevertheless, it was a lie in the first place. So, you don’t ALWAYS tell the truth then as you claim. — Fer

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That was a comment by ‘Fer’ posted in my article ‘Allow me to gloat today’.

As you can see, from the hundreds of issues that I have raised since the mid-1990s and the countless allegations I have made against politicians, police officers, civil servants, etc., there is only that one issue they keep raising, again and again, against me.

Do you mean to say, ‘Fer’, since the 17 or 18 years that I have been writing political commentaries, this is the one and only ‘lie’ that I am supposed to have made which you can use against me?

Never mind. Let’s then talk about this one ‘lie’ that you have raised. It is actually good that you have raised it because it gives me an opportunity to talk about it. Or else what excuse do I have in raising this matter? In this instance, I am not raising this matter. You have raised it, not me. I am just responding to the allegation that I had lied. And if I do not respond then you will say that the allegation is true.

Now, read my Statutory Declaration below. That is the original signed copy of my Statutory Declaration lodged in the Kuala Lumpur High Court on 18th June 2008. I trust this is the issue you are talking about, ‘Fer’. Can you tell me which part of that Statutory Declaration is my allegation against Rosmah Mansor?

Unless your command of the English language is really bad, you can see that the allegation is not against Rosmah. The allegation is against ‘an informer’. I did not declare, as you said, that Rosmah was there. Instead, I declared that an informer stated that Rosmah was there.

You see, I may not be a lawyer, but I do know how the law works. Any statement by a third party that you repeat becomes hearsay and hence is not admissible in court. You cannot make an allegation based on what someone told you. It must be based on what you yourself heard and/or saw. In this case I was NOT at the scene of the crime. Hence, by law, I cannot make any allegation when I was not there and did not see or hear what happened.

Before I signed this Statutory Declaration I did get advise from my lawyers and I was told as to what I can and cannot say. And I cannot say that Rosmah was there because I was not also there and hence did not see this. But I can say what I have been told by this third party or informer, which I did.

In fact, the law requires that you do this. If you do not, then you will be guilty of the crime of withholding information pertaining to a crime — and you can get sent to jail for that.

In short, I cannot, and did not, make an allegation against Rosmah. What I can do, and which I did do, is to say that someone else had made this allegation and that I know who this person is. Making an allegation and alleging that someone else had made an allegation are two different things. And as much as I may not have studied law, I do know enough law to understand what is hearsay and to avoid hearsay in my Statutory Declaration.

Thus, the allegation that I lied about Rosmah is itself a lie. In other words, I did not lie. You are lying that I lied. That is the long and short of it.

Now, let’s talk about the second part of your statement, ‘Fer’, where you said I corrected myself later. I do not know where you got this impression from but I suspect it must have been from my TV3 interview more than a year ago.

In my TV3 interview, I was asked about this Statutory Declaration of 18th June 2008 where I had made an allegation against Rosmah. I replied to that person interviewing me exactly like how I have responded above. I explained to TV3 that I DID NOT make any allegation against Rosmah. I never did back in June 2008 and I am not doing so now.

I then went into detail regarding the story of how I came to sign this Statutory Declaration. I also explained that at first I did not believe this allegation because I found it very far fetched. I also thought it unlikely that Rosmah would walk into that jungle and climb those hills.

Then, I explained, I checked with both Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Anwar Ibrahim and both of them confirmed that they are aware of this story. They also personally know my informer and consider him a very reliable/credible person who has been a great help to the Opposition. In fact, he has been feeding the Opposition a lot of very valuable information, especially pre-March 2008.

Based on this ‘endorsement’ by both Ku Li and Anwar, I decided to pursue this matter and sign the Statutory Declaration. Nevertheless, I made sure that I did NOT make any allegation against Rosmah, which will be hearsay, but instead alleged that my informer was the one who said this.

This was exactly what I said in my TV3 interview. What I said in June 2008 has not changed. My story still stands without any amendments, retractions, additions or subtractions.

Hence, ‘Fer’, in what way did I ‘lie’ in June 2008 and in what way did I ‘correct myself later’? Can you see that it is you, instead, who is lying, ‘Fer’? Or is it that your command of English is so bad?