I am busy but this controversy relating to Tian Chua’s sentence and his status as the Member of Parliament for Batu enrages me so much that I feel compelled to write something about it.
The law clearly states that an MP will lose his or her chair in the Parliament if he or she is ”sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not less than one year or to a fine of not less than RM2,000 and has not received a free pardon.” Any respectable college graduate — even those whom have passed their high school — will see that the equivalence is an MP will lose his or her chair if sentenced to jail for one year or more, or fined RM2,000 or more.
Surely, one does not need a law degree to come to that conclusion. Apparently, some in the legal profession believe that, as a friend of mine said, they can rewrite the laws of mathematics. They insist that legal precedent overrules mathematics!
Somebody should point out to them that this group of legal experts may lack knowledge of mathematics to undertake such a bold project.
This is probably a damning sign of the deplorable state of Malaysian education and legal systems. They do not know their inequality. Yikes!
Tian Chua the Batu MP at first was sentenced with a fine of RM3,000. In the name of public interest, the judge reduced the sentence to RM2,000 to avoid the need for a by-election, which will increase the cost of his judgment. Good intention, maybe, but RM2,000 will simply not do it. It has to be less than RM2,000.
Tian Chua’s legal counsel Amer Hamzah argues that ”not less than RM2,000” means more than RM2,000 and cites a legal precedent to back it up. Lawyers are lawyers. They want to win and I cannot blame them for that. They are paid to win. What more can I say?
Regardless of that, the truth is that the precedent is wrong and it has to be corrected.
Unless the judge believes in that argument by the lawyer, the judge has mistaken in his action. His action is not in line with his intention. Unlike Amer Hamzah, the judge does not have the room to perform ridiculous maneuvre. The judge should live up to the mistake and allow the next piece in the domino set to fall.
If the judge actually believes in Amer Hamzah’s argument, then the judge has to be an illiterate of mathematics.
A legal expert Shaq Faruqi states that ”[i]f the judge said he wished to avoid an election and to substitute the first court’s sentence with a sentence that avoids a by-election, then we should try to give effect to that purpose.” Professor, good intention is not enough.
It is not good enough because all this could have been avoided. It was not and we are at this juncture. Maybe, the judge is incompetent to do the necessary. Maybe, it is a plain mistake. Whatever it is, the right thing to do is to live with the mistake and live with the law. The law in this matter is quite uncontroversial anyway.
Furthermore, it is not good enough because there is a way to address this problem without bending the law too much. The next course of action should be an appeal.
But if Tian Chua refuses not appeal as he has indicated, then by all means, let us have an election in Batu. That is the rule of law. No to arbitrariness, please.
And let us blame the judge for incompetence.