KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 23 — DAP’s Lim Kit Siang today asked if the Chief Justice will embark on a nationwide tour to explain the Federal Court’s ruling in Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s case now that lead prosecutor Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah’s roadshow was “backfiring”.
According to the DAP parliamentary leader, criticism from some Umno members over Shafee’s tour — which he said was masterminded by Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin — demonstrated that the private lawyer was failing to convince the public as was intended.
Lim then asked if the Umno-linked lawyer’s inability to win over public opinion on Opposition Leader Anwar’s conviction for sodomy will now necessitate Chief Justice Tun Arifin Zakaria and the other Federal Court judges who decided the case to undertake a similar initiative.
“It is indeed quite unthinkable that the Federal Court judges would go on a nationwide road-show for a third bite of the cherry in Anwar’s Sodomy II trial, but it was equally unthinkable that the lead prosecutor of Anwar’s Sodomy II trial would go on a national roadshow for a second bite of the cherry to win support in the court of public opinion,” Lim said in a statement today.
“Malaysia has become a very strange and abnormal country, where strangest of things can happen.”
The Gelang Patah MP said the only way to convince Malaysians that such an extraordinary tour by the country’s most senior judges would not take place is for Putrajaya to direct Shafee to cease his roadshow to attack Anwar.
On February 17, Shafee told a forum that Anwar is a “closet homosexual” and posed a threat to national security, when explaining the Federal Court’s decision to jail the opposition leader for five years for sodomising his former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan.
Shafee, who acted as public prosecutor under fiat during Anwar’s trial, also shared in detail Saiful’s testimony on how Anwar had sodomised him in 2009.
Although the first forum organised by Umno Youth was open to the public, Shafee’s latest instalments in Penang have been marked as “closed-door” events and media are not allowed to report the remarks made within.
Today, Muslim preacher Wan Ji Wan Hussin and Ahmad Auzaie Arshad urged Selangor Islamic authorities to investigate Shafee for qazaf, or unsubstantiated allegations of sexual impropriety, over his allegations on Anwar’s sexuality.
On February 10, the Federal Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s 2014 ruling that had reversed Anwar’s acquittal of sodomising former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, and sentenced the Permatang Pauh lawmaker to five years’ jail.
