After listening to the prosecution, the Judge had decided as such:
“I am satisfied that the prosecutor has the prima facie which shows that the defendant, during his time as a Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, had the capacity to commit corruption in four charges that was made against him under s 2(I) from Ordinance No.22.”
For the first charge, the judge found that the defendant had ordered Dato’ Mohd Said bin Awang, a Special Branch Director and Amir bin Junus, Special Branch Deputy Director II to get written statement from Azizan bin Abu Bakar to deny the sodomy charge in the Statutory Declaration dated August 5, 1997 where they did manage to get with the reason to avoid humiliation.
For the second charge, the defendant was found to have ordered the same thing to the same people with the reason to protect himself from any legal actions.
For the third charge, the defendant had ordered Dato’ Mohd Said bin Awang, a Special Branch Director and Amir bin Junus, Special Branch Deputy Director II to get writen statement from Ummi Hafilda bte Ali to deny the charge on sexual misconduct and sodomy like what was written in a report, Perihal Salah Laku Timbalan Perdana Menteri (Misconduct Made By The Deputy Prime Minister) dated August 5, 1997 where they did manage to get with the reason to avoid humiliation.
The fourth charge, the defendant was found to have ordered the same thing to the same people with the reason to protect himself from any legal actions.
When he was questioned, Anwar tried to be himself where he would try to twist his words:
Question: Do you agree that P20 and P22 gave benefit to you?
Anwar: To me, benefit had nothing to do with this.
Question: Do you agree that P20 and P22 were important to you?
Anwar: The truth is important to me. P20 and P22 was written by Azizan. Ummi and Azizan’s statement on all of the insults and accusations were true.
Question: Do you agree that P20 and P22 were sent by you yourself to the Prime Minister along with D76 as references?
Anwar: The question is really confusing because D76 was sent to the Prime Minister only a year after that and I attached almost all of the letters there is including P14 which was also said had been sent to the Prime Minister. I do not know whether only a few or all of the references were sent to the Prime Minister before that.
Question: Do you agree that P20 and P22 were sent along with D76? Do you agree that you attached P20 and P22 along with D76 for the Prime Minister’s attention?
Anwar: D76 was written to the Prime Minister as a follow-up between the discussion between me and the Prime Minister.
Question: You did not answer my question.
Anwar: P20 and P22, I answered after discussing with the Prime Minister, all the document that were in my record was attached.
Question: This is just a simple question.
Anwar: I repeat, attachments in D76 including P20 and P22 were sent to the Prime Minister as a follow-up between the discussion between me and the Prime Minister.
Just look at how hard is it for Anwar to answer Yes or No question. Instead, he tried to confuse the court regarding the evidence which was the letter of denial from Ummi and Azizan to the Prime Minister/ Asked whether he ordered the police to get their statement, Anwar denied it and pointed at Dato’ Mohd Said and Dato’ Amir Junus.
The defense however, kept on blaming the government by saying that the government had a conspiracy with the police to bring him down. For that, the Judge stated:
Political conspiracy has been a slogan that the defense had been using arbitrarily since the beginning of the trial. This slogan is used to state that there are certain politicians who conspired to bring the defendant down and to get to the objective, they asked Ummi to make charge for their interest. Like what I have said earlier, true or not this conspiracy charge is, that is not the issue. What the prosecutor need is just facts of the charges. That is all they need for this charge. So, evidence and reason, motive and introduction or explanation of facts regarding that charge (conspiracy) is not relevant based on SS 7, 8 and 9 of the Evidence Act. This means, even though there are pressure, either political, corporate or any other form on the charge that was made by Ummi as proof (regarding conspiracy) is not relevant in this issue. What is left to be said by the defense other than denial, would be to prove that the witness of this charge regarding the orders that were given to them by the defendant were just made up or false.
However, when the defendant was asked regarding the political conspiracy charge, he only responded by saying that there are a few political individuals who were not happy with him since the financial crisis struck in 1997.
Once again, when he was asked whether this conspiracy theory was brought up to prove that all of the charges made on him are false, He answered,”No, It was to question the credibility of witness).”
To BE CONTINUED
