KUCHING, Feb 23: The Dayak National Congress (DNC) supports Putrajaya’s move to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to investigate the alleged judicial misconduct as claimed by Court of Appeal judge Datuk Dr Hamid Sultan Abu Backer recently.
DNC president Paul Raja in a statement today said the recent allegations of judicial conspiracy and collusion has had the indigenous community in the state worried as it could also involve native customary rights (NCR) land cases in Sarawak.
“With the allegations of conspiracy and collusion amongst judges and lawyers and fixing of judgements, the indigenous communities of Sarawak are very disturbed. We would like to know whether these allegations of scandals are also involving NCR land cases from Sarawak.
“We have seen lately that there has been a sudden about turn by the courts on NCR land cases. With just three Federal Court decisions, namely, Tuai Rumah (TR) Sandah, TR Nyutan and TR Massa, the indigenous peoples’ rights over their NCR lands are suddenly decimated,” Paul said.
Dr Hamid Sultan recently alleged in court papers that there were scams between certain top judges and private litigants to cheat the government.
On Feb 14, Dr Hamid Sultan said the scams were carried out by nominees of politicians getting into contracts with the government.
Meanwhile, Paul said the indigenous people of Sarawak had been asking, legitimately, the question of what could justify the total about turn by the courts after having regards to many recognitions for the past 20 over years.
“Has it been a mistake by those judges over all those years?”
He added that with the volume of accusations made against the judiciary, the indigenous people were very concerned whether the judiciary had also assisted the state government against their NCR land cases.
“The indigenous people have the right to know the truth on these very serious allegations,” said Paul.
He continued: “The damage done to the judiciary by these unscrupulous judicial officers, true or not must be investigated. What Justice Hamid Sultan said lend credence to the allegations and suspicions against the judiciary.
“We strongly support the setting up of the RCI on the Judiciary to investigate all the allegations by the learned justice,” he iterated.
Paul said the learned judge must not be persecuted for his courage to speak up, and must be treated fairly.
A whistleblower, he stressed, must not be victimized as they used to be under the past regime. All complaints made by the whistleblower must be investigated to ascertain the truth and there must be no cover-up or procrastination to uncover the truth by any quarters.
“If what have been alleged are found to be true, the law must take its course. There must be courage on the part of the current regime to purge corrupt judges if there is to be at any hope or at all to restore confidence in our courts.
“The international communities are also watching. The wellbeing and welfare of this nation is hanging in a balance after having been compromised by judicial indiscretion and imprudence by the custodians of the law and justice,” said Paul.
With that, he urged the government to act decisively and expeditiously with a sense of urgency. — DayakDaily
