This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 13, 2021 - December 19, 2021

A reminder of the frightening decay in the integrity of the nation’s leaders and the courts’ role in upholding the rule of law to ensure the “modern-day plague is eradicated” accompanied the Court of Appeal’s 308-page grounds of judgement in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s SRC trial.

Some 45 years after the Datuk Harun Idris case, the immortal words of the late Raja Azlan Shah in sentencing the then Selangor menteri besar to a term of imprisonment for various charges of corruption, were recited by appellate court judge Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil.

“It is painful for me to have to sentence a man I know. I wish it were the duty of some other judge to perform that task.

“I believe the very extensive coverage of this hearing in the press has permeated all levels of our society. To me this hearing seems to reaffirm the vitality of the rule of law. But to many of us, this hearing also suggests a frightening decay in the integrity of some of our leaders.

“It has given horrible illustrations of Lord Acton’s aphorism ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, and has focused concern on the need of some avowed limitations upon political authority.

“I repeat what I had said before — the law is no respecter of persons. Nevertheless, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category from any person that I have ever tried. It would be impossible to ignore the fact that, in the eyes of millions of our countrymen and women, you are a patriot and a leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals. You had every chance to reach the greatest height of human achievement. But half-way along the road, you allowed avarice to corrupt you. It is incomprehensible how a man in your position could not in your own conscience, recognise corruption for what it is. In so doing, you have not only betrayed your party cause, for which you have spoken so eloquently, but also the oath of office which you have taken and subscribed before your Sovereign Ruler, and above all the law of which you are its servant.

“You insisted that the pay-offs were in fact political contributions given and received in keeping with long-established practices and they had been made to look criminal by a hostile witness, scuttling to save his own skin. But the evidence plainly shows that you have devised a scheme of unparalleled cunning and committed an almost perfect crime. But crime, though it hath no tongue, speaks out at times. Your method is your own doing because even the long arm of coincidence cannot explain the multitude of circumstances against you, and they destroy the presumption of innocence with which the law clothed you.

“Political contributions have been a highly-organised professional obligation in Europe and in the States; they are a sign of the times. Malaysia, it seems to me, is emulating that way of life. Whatever may be the moral of it, so long as they are not given and received for the corrupt exercise of official functions, they are not a crime.

“I believe that for the past few months you have suffered something like tortures of hell. The deprivations and suffering you and your family went through should be enough penance.

“It is also true that for a public official who rose so high, disgrace and banishment from public life are severe punishment indeed. I have duly taken that into consideration and also what has been said by your counsel,” Justice Abdul Karim said, quoting Raja Azlan.

The appellate judge then made a pointed observation: “And some forty-five years later, these words still bear relevance to the appellant, and where we as a nation find ourselves at now. The ‘frightening decay in the integrity of some of our leaders’ that Raja Azlan Shah AgLP (as HH then was) warned us of 45 years ago is still a scourge that plagues this beautiful nation. The courts in upholding the rule of law would have to do what is necessary to ensure that this modern-day plague is eradicated for the good of the nation. The law is indeed ‘no respecter of persons’. All men are equal before the law, and the courts apply the law equally to all.”

It is worth noting that Najib’s father, the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, had sanctioned the judicial action to be taken against Harun for his corrupt actions, which included the forging of minutes of a meeting for the purpose of cheating Bank Rakyat by pledging its stock to the then First National City Bank (Citibank) to get letters of credit for Tinju Dunia Sdn Bhd to stage a fight between boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Bugner.

This had caused Bank Rakyat to lose a reported RM7.9 million, for which Harun was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, but later released after serving three years of his sentence as he was pardoned by the then Yang Di-Pertuan Agong on the advice of then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

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