The opening lines in a statutory declaration: “I, Balasubramaniam a/l Perumal (NRIC NO: xxxxxx-xx-6235) a Malaysian Citizen of full age and residing at xxxxx, Selangor do solemly and sincerely declare…”
AFTER the VK Lingam video surfaced to suggest former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, lawyer Lingam and others had fixed the judiciary the problem for those implicated was to get at the evidence – the video itself. This was next to impossible not only because the clip could be duplicated a million times over, but also the contents that had existed in the past were not erasable. And the video maker was at the time anonymous. Then, also, the contents are in the persons named in the clip, Lingam et al. Even after taken into consideration all that, there was hardly a motive to want to get any or all the three parts of the evidences – the clip, the maker of the clip, and the contents. Reasons are these: the Chief Justice named in the video is no longer the country’s top judge, nor is the prime minister the prime minister, by now a hated figure.
Now comes a statutory declaration dated July 1 made by one P Balasubramaniam. Like the VK Lingam video, there are again three parts to the statutory declaration or the idea itself:
- the prescribed declaration form;
- its maker; and
- the contents.
The declaration itself is protected by law. How then does one get rid of a legal instrument, not just the physical form but the idea itself? This is what is reported from Bala’s nephew (in Malaysia Today), a man named Kumaresan:
“Kumaresan also disclosed that on July 1 after his uncle had prepared first statutory declaration (two days before it was released at the PKR headquarters), his uncle had met and given the original copy to his brother for safekeeping.”
Bala, evidently, thought that a physical copy is important. This seems a perfectly natural thought, like it were his passport, his identity card. Bala’s first declaration is proof of something existing – in this case, his statement with the allegations of certain events.
When another statutory declaration was made, dated July 4, in effect repudiating the first, the answer to the question (cited earlier) became self-evident. (Repudiating a declaration by another declaration has other implications, which will be tackled later. This is because one declaration does not annul another without mutual self-destruction. It’s like saying, my name is P Balasubramniam and I now declare by name is not P Balasubramniam.) But, the physical copy, if still in the hands of Bala’s brother, becomes useless. And this is what counts.
Here’s the problem with trying to kill the past, or reality: the evidences of the past are also in the maker of the declaration. After all, the declaration is purely a summation, or a sworn testimony, in written form, of events witnessed or heard or seen by the maker. In the Lingam video, the maker is the recorder of events; in Bala’s first declaration, he is verifying under law, he is the evidence. Or, at the least, he is a part of the evidences. Now Bala is missing, in the sense neither family nor friends know where he is.
To kill the one declaration is to issue another. But to the contents of the statutory declaration – and this is the difficult part - how do you kill the events mentioned therein? Bala’s second declaration of July 4 had merely deleted the parts implicating powerful figures - assuming them true - but, if so, what about the past itself.
Recall the sodomy allegation against Anwar Ibrahim, and also the Lingam video. One of the rebuttals offered by the government was not Anwar’s denial, that is, not his denial of the accusation. The government then asked, and reiterated by Umno Putera, did the event occur? This is what sticks in the throat. In the Lingam video, the Royal Commission investigating it, the question it asks itself was, did such a phone conversation take place – never mind the recording itself? The answer was, yes.
Facts are erasable, but truth is fungible. The allegation that powerful figures were involved in the murder of Altantuya becomes mere allegation if they are not verifiable. Truth, or the assertion of it, must answer the question: how do you know? This is the paradox that has occupied some philosophers trying to distinguish between truth and science. Any verifiable truth matter must be, not verifiable, but falsifiable – that is proven false. All swans are white is a true statement because there had never been a black swan, not in a thousand years. One day, a black swan turned up in Australia. This says that truth is tentative and must allow itself to be falsifiable.
Bala the declaration maker being missing, hence, removes the link between the events and the statutory declaration. The July 1 declaration has been dealt with, by another declaration and rendered useless. (All arguments over what or which is believable are as pointless and as they are unproductive to the outcome or effect derived from the first declaration.) But the actual events?
The events are the contents in the declaration. The events float in the consciousness. Bala, by the first declaration, has now suggested the truth in those events. A missing Bala goes a long way to alter the truth – the black swan is missing. The assumption all along is that the forces involved in Bala’s July 4 declaration are also involved in his disappearance.
But, also notice the cavalier attitude and the complete absence of precautions taken to protect Bala after he made public his first declaration. It is as if Anwar Ibrahim was waiting for Bala to be taken in by – no, literally handed him in to – the opposing forces.
Here is Raja Petra Kamarudin’s testimony:
“I met Bala on 2 July 2008 and was with him for about six hours from 6.30pm. He was jovial and chatty and joked that my SD (statutory declaration) two weeks earlier had stolen the thunder from his. Now, his has become the second SD instead of the first as he had hoped. After the press conference of 3 July 2008 we had lunch and he was still as jovial and chatty as the night before. He was now the superstar and he was relishing every minute of it. We agreed to meet on Saturday night (tonight) to party and celebrate the ‘success’ of his SD. Then, yesterday (July 4), the bombshell.”
No talk of protection; no protection; only partying. That’s only the ostensible part.
Now, if Anwar or Anwar’s party, the PKR (Justice), has Bala, or is protecting him, then this is a swan he can’t let go. Declaring one declaration against another does not repudiate the events, assuming them true. That is, actual history, the past, does not allow itself to be changed. Bala is the evidence; he may change his story and so on, but he is still the evidence.
If Anwar’s opposing forces has Bala, then - again assuming his statements true - they have the black swan. The last time somebody of some significance disappeared, the body was found in tiny, powdered unrecognisable bits.
The happiness or unhappiness of a man is hardly the point. Yet commentators, typically for Anwar Ibrahim (extreme right, picture right), bellyache endlessly over which statutory declaration, Jul 1 or 4, is true by pointing to the demeanour of P Balasubramaniam in between the two dates of the photos taken Jul 3 with Anwar and Jul 4 (picture left), after the second declaration was issued.
Malik Imtiaz is probably not the first person to suggests that, in Malaysia, the rule of law has collapsed but he is one of the first lawyers to state so categorically and openly. His colleagues at the Malaysian Bar, and the Bar itself, have toyed with the word, collapse, by substituting it with words to the effect as, ‘undermine the rule of law’. It is as if, somehow, all the institutions are still intact and they are not a wreck, only damaged. They can be saved. But here is one more among the latest pieces found in the wreckage: authorities choosing their court of justice.
In the circumstances, life will be fought on the streets. Forget especially people with grand words - justice, freedom and so on - and preaching “do not speak about freedom of speech if you are not prepared for the consequences.” They say these things knowing they don’t have to live with the consquences. Give them freedom, you never know what they will do with it. This is to say that people, some ostensibly on the side of virtue(try looking for bloggers with top hits), also lie. Bala, a former policeman, is proof. One day on the side of truth, on the side of law, another day neither; he has now said he lied. They were Balas before and Balas today and they will be Balas waiting to show themselves in the future. That, for Malik Imtiaz’s benefit, is the true meaning of the collapse of the rule of law. We are each, individually, on our own.
