FZ Says: Mahathir can sidestep RCI, but history will be his judge

 

 

IT IS a travesty of justice that former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad can appear before the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the illegal immigrants problem in Sabah and deny any knowledge of ‘Project IC’, the so-called exercise to issue citizenship to these immigrants, during his eventful tenure at the helm of the government.

 

Mahathir has cast a long shadow over the country during his 22-year rule of Malaysia, and the episode where Sabah’s illegal immigrants were issued identity cards in a protracted operation that has changed the state’s electoral demographics is just one of a list of scandals that have tainted his administration.

 

The travesty arises because the institutions of governance as they exist in Malaysia are largely neutered and are incapable of rectifying the weaknesses that prevent the rule of law from operating effectively.

 

Considering the grave political, social and security implications of the irregular citizenship exercise, it is absurd that the commission is not empowered to establish the culpability of the main protagonists and to order definite remedies, including the punishment of the perpetrators and seizure of records to get to the bottom of the matter.

 

Instead, the commission’s scope is so limited as to be pathetic, confined to investigating various dimensions of the social, administrative and political issues that surround the problem, in a manner more befitting of a research project rather than the country’s highest investigative forum that is dedicated to the pursuit of truth and justice.

 

In the light of this, it is no wonder that Mahathir could respond to the questions of Commission Chairman Tan Sri Steve Shim Lip Keong on Wednesday by saying that he could not remember key announcements on the matter by senior members of his administration.

 

Perhaps more than anyone else who ought to know what exactly took place during his premiership, Mahathir must be very well aware that the RCI is not empowered to seek anything more than he was willing to divulge to it.

 

The former prime minister’s testimony this week is in many ways a reminder of an earlier fiasco, when he took to the witness stand during the RCI into the VK Lingam videotape scandal in 2008 concerning the alleged interference of the executive in the appointment of the judiciary.

 

In that episode too, gaps in the chain of accountability have allowed Mahathir and other protagonists in the scandal to remain untouched.

 

These examples of the country’s paralysis in the face of grave abuses of power are unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg. The unremitting misuse of public office for political and personal ends could, and have, filled many volumes.