When it is the law’s fault and not the judge’s

By admin-s Last updated Nov 4, 2014

Now that Sri Ram is Anwar Ibrahim’s lead counsel, the same critics of the system that sent Lim to jail are saying that it is not the judge’s fault but the fault of the law.

Roslan Bistamam, FMT

A flashback to the time when Gopal Sri Ram sent Lim Guan Eng to jail.

Lim Guan Eng’s three-year conviction for sedition has been hailed as a great injustice and an attack on free speech. Until today, DAP supporters still talk about the 16-year-old story of how Lim sacrificed himself in defence of a Malay girl.

The fact that Lim is Chinese and the girl he spoke up for is Malay is being touted as evidence that the Penang Chief Minister is not a racist. Are they suggesting that Lim did this because he is Chinese and she is Malay and not because he wanted justice for the girl?

Why must this episode be seen along racial lines and touted as evidence that Lim is not a racist when we could argue that the real motive was to bring down Umno in Melaka?

Anyway, what is more important is that at the end of Lim’s first appeal, Court of Appeal Judge Gopal Sri Ram, in sentencing him to three years’ jail, said, “It is time that the court sends a clear message that it cannot tolerate any attack on the judiciary.”

Hence Lim was jailed because, according to Sri Ram, he attacked the judiciary for not sending the then Melaka Chief Minister, Rahim Thambi Chik, to jail.