Bilateral Relations with Indonesia: Ambalat, Manohara, Indonesian Labour and Other Issues
JAKARTA,June 4, 2008 — It usually blows hot and cold in Indonesia-Malaysia ties. And it has turned decidedly chilly here over two issues — a longstanding territorial dispute over Ambalat, off Borneo, and the runaway Indonesian teen wife of a Kelantan prince.
The Indonesian media has been swamped with daily front-page stories and television talkshows about the latest “intrusion” into Ambalat by Malaysian warships, and the teenage model Manohara Odelia Pinot who claimed to have been abused by her husband.
In the midst of the Indonesian presidential campaign, Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself commented on both issues on Tuesday. The President vowed there would be no compromise on Indonesia’s sovereignty over Ambalat, and expressed his concern over the model’s troubles.
Said analyst Bantarto Bandoro of the University of Indonesia: “Indonesians tend to view the two issues from purely nationalist eyes. It is only natural that nationalist sentiments are whipped up and anti-Malaysia sentiments are fanned.”
The Ambalat issue flared up again when Indonesia’s navy claimed it intercepted a Malaysian naval vessel encroaching 12 nautical miles into Indonesian waters in the Sulawesi Sea last Saturday. The disputed area is an oil-rich region.
Media reports here, quoting a naval spokesman, said Indonesian vessels were on the verge of opening fire on the Malaysian ship, which was chased back into Malaysian waters off Sabah. Kuala Lumpur has not commented on the incident.
Jakarta claimed it was the ninth “encroachment” this year. Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said talks over the Ambalat issue with Malaysia had been on hold since April last year. “We are preparing a protest note to be sent to Malaysia” over the latest incident, he added.
Indonesian activists yesterday gathered in front of the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta, protesting against the alleged mistreatment of Indonesian workers by Malaysian employers and referencing it to the Ambalat dispute, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.
The case of 17-year-old Manohara Odesia Pinot, who at the weekend claimed to have “escaped” from her husband of nine months, the Kelantan prince, also elicited a stream of bad vibes in the local media and the Internet. Many expressed anger at the Malaysians, repeating past contentious issues between both sides.
These include the controversy over what Indonesia sees as Malaysian claims of ownership of the folk song “Rasa Sayang”, claims over batik and Javanese mask dance reog ponorogo, as well as alleged abuse of Indonesian workers in Malaysia.
Comments in the media on Ambalat and Manohara have focused on getting the authorities to take a hardline stance against Malaysia. One blogger, Arman Effendi, said: “It is still fresh in our minds the loss of Sipadan and Ligitan islands (to Malaysia) and the exploitation of Indonesian migrant workers.”
The oil blocks in Ambalat are close to Sipadan and Ligitan islands, whose ownership was disputed for years by Indonesia and Malaysia. The International Court of Justice awarded the islands to Malaysia in 2002.
Shortly before returning to Indonesia from the Asean-South Korea summit, President Bambang Yudhoyono told Indonesian reporters that Jakarta would not tolerate Malaysia’s claim over Ambalat. “Malaysia’s claim is unacceptable because the area is within Indonesia’s territory,” he said. “There will be no compromise but we will resolve the matter without risking peace and the relationship between Indonesia and our neighbouring country, Malaysia.”
On the Manohara case, he said he had told Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda and Indonesia’s Ambassador to Malaysia Dai Bachtiar to look into it. “I told them to handle this issue fully and to be aware of the line between domestic affairs, spousal — or family — issues and human rights violations,” the Jakarta Globe quoted him as saying on Tuesday.
Both issues have also been taken up by parliamentarians, with deputy parliamentary commission chairman Yusron Ihza Mahendra saying yesterday that they were matters of concern. Saying that Parliament would also summon Wirajuda for an explanation, Yusron said: “We don’t consider the Manohara case as a domestic issue. She is an Indonesian citizen who deserves to be protected. The Ambalat case is also getting hotter now. The manoeuvres by Malaysian naval vessels in Ambalat are acts of belittling Indonesia.”
Probe allegations against Kelantan prince
Letter to Malaysiakini from Frankly Xroy | Jun 2, 09 5:38pm
I refer to the Malaysiakini reportManohara: I was treated like an animal.
In the first place Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak who, according to your reports, knew this prince, was shielded from the Indonesian press seeking answers from him during his recent trip to Jakarta.
Secondly you report that she was raped at the age of fifteen. If indeed there was any form of sexual relations with her at that age where penetration took place, regardless if there was consent or not on her part, it is rape. Sexual intercourse with a minor is statutory rape and if that is the case, it has to be treated accordingly.
Apparently our deputy prime minister does not see the real issue here – it is no longer a ‘personal problem.’ It is an allegation of abduction and rape and those are criminal acts and the prince is not immune from criminal prosecution if this is the case.
The intervention of the Indonesian and American officials coupled with the assistance of the Singapore police in this case goes to show that this is not merely a ‘personal problem’ as suggested by our deputy prime minister – it goes further than that.
This attitude of our top brass has now been ingrained in their mindset in that all these things seem to trifle for them and that there is no need to interfere. We have had too many of such incidents here where they seem to accuse innocent people of heinous crimes and overlook the really serious allegations.
The name of the nation is at stake as a royal prince has had criminal allegations made out against him. There have been allegations of a person attempting to inject Ms Manohara Odelia Pinot with a substance, there have been reports that the prince was shouting at her when she left and there have also been reports that the prince allowed her to leave.
I am sure we can have independent testimony for the same from the Singapore police, the American officials and the Indonesian officials.
‘To date, we have not been dragged into it, so we want to leave it as it is,’ the Malaysian deputy prime minister told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, AFP reported.
However, he did not say that at an earlier stage, the prime Minister of Malaysia steered himself clear of the press regarding this issue in Indonesia.
Even if the Indonesian president ‘arranged’ it, out of sheer respect for the Indonesian people, he (the prime minister) should have met the Indonesian press.
The Malaysian deputy prime minister should also be aware that Manohara’s mother was refused entry into Malaysia and that the official mouthpiece of the government carried an article of Ms Pinot smiling in the presence of the prince indicating all was alright.
The government needs to investigate the allegations of criminal assault, statutory rape, or rape whichever the case may be, abduction and the drugging of a person in captivity on one side and malicious talk against our royalty on the other.
This has to be done transparently to ensure our good name is kept intact.
Whether this government is capable of such an exercise after all the recent events in this country is something we are not too confident about.
Will our foreign minister want to go back to Washington again and meet with Hillary Clinton?
Manohara Odelia Pinot (right) with her sister Dewi Sari Asih
Alleged royal violence not a ‘personal matter’
Prema Devaraj | Jun 2, 09 5:36pm
We refer to the Malaysiakini report Manohara: I was treated like an animal.
The Women’s Centre for Change Penang (WCC) views with great concern the allegations made by Indonesian teenager, Manohara Odelia Pinot regarding the physical, emotional and sexual violence she has endured in her marriage to Kelantan Prince, Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry.
WCC is glad to see that the Foreign Affairs Ministry has offered to help if Manohara files a complaint and we would strongly encourage Manohara to file a complaint, as well as lodge a police report so that investigations can commence.
Domestic violence is a criminal offence. Under the Domestic Violence Act (1994), domestic violence includes causing or threatening to cause physical injury, confining a person, damaging property or forcing a person to do something she can legally refuse to do.
A person found guilty of committing these acts can be charged under the Penal Code.
Domestic violence has been increasing steadily in recent years. In 2007, there were 3,756 cases of domestic violence reported to the police nationwide. These figures are said to only represent the tip of the iceberg as many victims tend to keep silent over the abuse they receive.
Many are ignorant of the Domestic Violence Act (1994) which can actually help protect victims from further abuse.
WCC views with deep concern the comments made by the Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin regarding Manohara’s allegations.
He was reported as saying “…this is more a personal matter’ and ‘…so we want to leave it as it is.”
Manohara and AsihWCC would like to stress that domestic violence is not a personal matter, but is of public concern, given that it is a crime.
To have a Malaysian leader trivialise allegations of domestic violence indicates that violence against women is still not understood nor taken seriously.
Given the Malaysian government’s commitment to the passing of the Domestic Violence Act (1994) and as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the government is duty bound to investigate these allegations.
The writer is programme director, Women’s Centre for Change, Penang (WCC).
-WE SHOULD BE CHARGED TOMORROW!
ON 7 MAY 2009, 69 of us were arrested. During the full-day interrogation I have not been told why I was being arrested. Today I still do not know why they arrested me. But tomorrow morning at the Magiostrate Court in Ipoh, if I am being charged I will definitely know why I was arrested. Until tomorrow I am still ignorant. But they should charge us, yes?Jong our Ipoh candle-light vigil friend informed me that we meet at DAP HQ as DAP lawyers will be on hand to help us through this process. The court convenes at 10:00am. If not for Jong I would be heading straight to court. I remember giving my details to Janice Lee. Maybe they only inform DAP members? This I doubt.
Tonight Helen Ang and I will leave KL at 10:00pm. Gus Gan, without any request decided that he would drive us to Ipoh. Thats friendship, sticking with your friends through thick and thin. Thanks Gus, thanks so very much.
And thanks Jong for giving Helen a bed tonight. We don’t want to have her with us in our hotel room because she would not understand our nocturnal overtures…..like intense snoring……
Walaupun masih belum menerima penghujahan bertulis keputusan Mahkamah Rayuan 22 Mei yang mengesahkan Dr Zambry Abd Kadir sebagai Menteri Besar, namun ini tidak menghalang langkah Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin untuk memfailkan rayuan kepada Mahkamah Persekutuan.
“Kita masih belum menerima penghujahan bertulis daripada Mahkamah Rayuan. Walau bagaimanapun setelah berbincang dengan peguam pihak kami akan memfailkan rayuan kepada Mahkamah Persekutuan pada hari Isnin 8 Jun depan,” kata Nizar.
Tambahnya pasukan peguam beliau akan memohon agar rayuan beliau akan didengar oleh panel penuh sembilan hakim.
Hakim Mahkamah Rayuan Md Raus Sharif sebelum ini berkata penghakiman bertulis akan dikeluarkan pada 29 Mei.
Bagaimanapun faks daripada pejabat Mahkamah Rayuan memberitahu bahawa mahkamah tersebut masih dalam proses menyediakan penghakiman bertulis tersebut menurut peguam Nizar, Leong Cheok Leng.
“Kita berharap akan menerima dokumen tersebut pada minggu ini supaya kami dapat bersedia untuk proses rayuan kepada Mahkamah Persekutuan,” katanya.
Nizar mempunyai tempoh masa sebulan daripada tarikh keputusan secara lisan untuk memfailkan rauian beliau.
Beliau akan mengangkat sumpah sebagai Ahli Parlimen Bukit Gantang apabila Parlimen menyambung sidang 15 Jun depan.If things had gone as planned in 1986, the conservative Alabama prosecutor would have been confirmed to a lifetime appointment to a federal judgeship. But allegations of racism cast Sessions as a throwback to the Jim Crow South, and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted down his nomination. Stunned and embarrassed, Sessions returned home to Mobile as a man undone.
Soon he turned to politics, was elected to the Senate and joined the very committee that denied him a seat on the federal bench. He ascended from behind the scenes to the panel’s top Republican spot, and it now falls to him to weigh the GOP’s competing interests and political calculations while guiding the fractured party through the upcoming confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Yesterday, the judge went to the Capitol for private meetings with Sessions and other key senators.
With her nomination, race (and ethnicity) once again looms as a major subplot. This time, though, Sessions is on the other side of the rostrum, and there are some who wonder how he will handle it. Will Sessions go after Sotomayor the way Senate Democrats vilified him long ago? Or has the experience made him more empathetic to nominees who face tough questioning?
“I’ve felt sorry for the poor person in the pit getting grilled,” Sessions said in a recent interview. “I don’t think you’ll find that I’ve abused any witness. And I don’t like vindication.”
Sotomayor, facing pressure from lawmakers to explain her comments from 2001 that her Latina identity matters in how she reaches conclusions, told Democratic and Republican senators yesterday that she would follow the law.But it was a Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who pressed her most directly to clarify her remarks. Leahy said that she told him, “Of course one’s life experience shapes who you are,” but that she added: “Ultimately and completely, a judge has to follow the law, no matter what their upbringing has been.”
Sessions said Sotomayor — who will resume her visits with lawmakers today — used similar language with him, but he conceded, “I don’t know that we got into that significantly.” Rather the two spent more time discussing “the moral authority of laws and judges.” He said he “enjoyed the conversation.”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, 62, is an unlikely choice to be the face of the GOP at such a critical juncture. At times, he has appeared uncomfortable in the spotlight. When Sotomayor visited his office yesterday, the white-haired senator who speaks with a heavy Southern accent sat before a throng of cameras clutching his hands together and nervously tapping his right foot.
As the committee’s ranking Republican, taking over after Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) switched parties this spring, Sessions sets the priorities of a party already facing a deep split between conservatives and moderates. He is considering comments by radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) that Sotomayor is racist, but he also is conscious of turning off Latino voters by questioning Sotomayor too aggressively.
And then there is the political reality: Sessions has just one vote, and Republicans have seven, on a committee of 19.
“It’s a tough job because you’re the principal negotiator and point man for your party,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “But Jeff is not a shrinking violet by any stretch of the imagination.”But it was a Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who pressed her most directly to clarify her remarks. Leahy said that she told him, “Of course one’s life experience shapes who you are,” but that she added: “Ultimately and completely, a judge has to follow the law, no matter what their upbringing has been.”
Sessions said Sotomayor — who will resume her visits with lawmakers today — used similar language with him, but he conceded, “I don’t know that we got into that significantly.” Rather the two spent more time discussing “the moral authority of laws and judges.” He said he “enjoyed the conversation.”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, 62, is an unlikely choice to be the face of the GOP at such a critical juncture. At times, he has appeared uncomfortable in the spotlight. When Sotomayor visited his office yesterday, the white-haired senator who speaks with a heavy Southern accent sat before a throng of cameras clutching his hands together and nervously tapping his right foot.
As the committee’s ranking Republican, taking over after Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) switched parties this spring, Sessions sets the priorities of a party already facing a deep split between conservatives and moderates. He is considering comments by radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) that Sotomayor is racist, but he also is conscious of turning off Latino voters by questioning Sotomayor too aggressively.
And then there is the political reality: Sessions has just one vote, and Republicans have seven, on a committee of 19.
“It’s a tough job because you’re the principal negotiator and point man for your party,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “But Jeff is not a shrinking violet by any stretch of the imagination.”Sessions has promised a rigorous review of Sotomayor’s record and warned that there may be a “drop in deference to the president” because he said Democrats were “very, very aggressive” in questioning President George W. Bush’s nominees. He also is resisting calls from Obama and Leahy to confirm Sotomayor by Aug. 7, when the Senate breaks for a recess. Yesterday, he said he wants hearings to take place in October.
Beloved by conservatives, Sessions has been a vocal opponent of allowing undocumented immigrants the chance to become U.S. citizens. But unlike many of his colleagues on the panel, he lacks a national profile and a signature issue. Some in Alabama describe Sessions as “vanilla.”
Yet what the 5-foot-5 senator lacks in bravado, he makes up for in discipline, practiced over hours as a Sunday-school teacher at his family’s Methodist church, 14 years in the Army Reserve and decades as a lawyer. An early riser, he often goes to the Capitol gym before 7 a.m., running on the treadmill and hashing over bills with Cornyn.
Known as a nuts-and-bolts senator, Sessions arrives at committee meetings having done his homework, colleagues said. The Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” is engraved on a stone on his office desk.
His steady handling thus far of the Sotomayor nomination has earned praise from across the aisle.
“We may well disagree on the final outcome of the nomination, but I think he’s handled it in a very statesmanlike fashion,” Leahy said.
Sessions’s courtroom experience lends credibility to his arguments, his Republican colleagues said. As someone who supports a strict interpretation of the Constitution, he believes that no judge should be swayed by personal or political allegiances, and he takes issue with Obama’s statement that judges should have “empathy . . . with people’s hopes and struggles.” Sessions called this a “postmodern infection” that threatens law.
“We need to articulate why it’s important that judges show restraint and that every American can believe that when they call that ball a ball and that strike a strike it was an honest call, not because they were pulling for one side or another,” he said.
If Sotomayor’s America is the South Bronx in New York, then Sessions’s is Hybart, Ala. The two locales couldn’t be more different. Sotomayor chased her dreams as a Latina in the city projects, playing loteria, a card game, with neighborhood kids. She once bragged about her cultural taste in food as a young lady, eating such delicacies as pig intestines, pigs’ feet with beans, and pigs’ tongue and ears.
Sessions, meanwhile, came of age in a vast, bucolic land. He grew up in a modest country house and went hunting and fishing. He worked with his father around the general store the family owned. Every bit the good Alabama boy, Sessions became an Eagle Scout just before enrolling at Huntingdon College, a small Methodist school in nearby Montgomery.
In the 1960s, as the world around him changed dramatically, Sessions said he was disengaged from the civil rights movement, becoming engrossed instead with the conservative politics of the National Review. He said he regrets not having taken a lead in fighting for civil rights.
“I guess I was more like the average Alabamian,” he said. “Most of my contemporaries, including myself, we probably could have been more affirmative in taking stands on those issues.”
Sessions said the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books and the TV show “Dragnet” inspired him to become a lawyer. (Sotomayor, too, cites Nancy Drew novels as an inspiration.)
After President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. attorney in Mobile in 1981, Sessions brought charges of voter fraud against three black civil rights activists, including a former aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They were acquitted.
In 1986, Reagan nominated him for the federal bench, and accusations of racial insensitivities hung over his Senate hearings. Sessions called the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” and “communist-inspired” and said they tried to “force civil rights down the throats of people,” according to sworn statements. He was accused of calling a black assistant “boy.” And he once said of the Ku Klux Klan “I used to think they’re okay” until learning that some members were “pot smokers,” according to sworn statements.
After Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) led the fight against Sessions, calling him “a throwback to a disgraceful era,” Sessions responded: “That is the most painful thing I have ever heard. . . . It breaks my heart.”
The Judiciary Committee approved 269 Reagan nominees to the federal bench before ever voting one down. Sessions was the first, and he left Washington without even the support of his home-state senator on the panel, Howell Heflin (D).
Recalling the episode, Sessions said his comments had been distorted to smear him. “It was so embarrassing to have people think that I didn’t believe in equality, that I was racist or had discriminatory intent,” he said. “This was horrible. That was not so.”
For Sessions, the Sotomayor hearings provide a chance to recover.
“He’s spent much of his career on the far side of the gulf from the civil rights community, from the party now in power, from people like Sonia Sotomayor,” said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous. “We hope that he will distinguish himself not just as a leader of the Senate, but distinguish himself from his own history of making divisive comments.”
So far, Sessions and Sotomayor have gotten off to a smooth start. When they first met yesterday, they exchanged laughs. By the time Sotomayor left after 30 minutes of closed-door conversation, the Southern senator and Latina judge appeared as if they had found common ground — perhaps over Nancy Drew.
Staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.
By Amer Hamzah Arshad (Loyarburok)
As a Perakian, I will always remember 11.5.2009 as the day when justice and truth alighted briefly for a moment in a Kuala Lumpur High Court. It was the day when, against all expectations, the Kuala Lumpur High Court allowed Nizar’s application for several declaratory orders, amongst others, an order declaring him as the rightful Menteri Besar of Perak. The Judge delivered a reasoned and legally sound written judgment. It has been reportedly and analyzed widely already so there is no need for me to do the same. What I would like to reflect upon here is the aftermath of that decision.
On 12.5.2009, Zambry appealed the High Court decision to the Court of Appeal. He also filed an application for an interim stay the High Court order pending the disposal of his appeal before the Court of Appeal. The purpose and intention of that interim stay application was to prevent Nizar from resuming his duty as the Menteri Besar notwithstanding the decision of the Kuala Lumpur High Court. Zambry’s ex-parte stay application, without any surprise, was allowed by the Court of Appeal, by a single judge.
Before discussing the Court of Appeal stay order, I think it necessary to comment on the speed in which Zambry’s stay application was heard and thereafter granted. Zambry filed his application for stay of the Kuala Lumpur High Court decision on 12.5.2009. Amazingly, his application was scheduled to be heard at 11.30am on the same day, i.e. approximately 2 hours after the stay application was filed. In both my experience and many of my learned friends, an application is just not heard that quickly ordinarily or even exceptionally, with a certificate of urgency. None of us have ever heard an application being sealed, issued and fixed for hearing before a judge (be it at any level – Magistrates all the way up to the Federal Court), heard and the application allowed in less than 2 1/2 hours. If the courts were ordinarily that efficient, I would have no cause for complaint. But it just doesn’t happen that way usually.
This glaring efficiency would not have been so bad if it applied to the opposing party as well. However, when Nizar filed his application to set aside the ex-parte stay order he did not get the same efficient service. His application was filed on 13.5.2009, a day after the stay order was granted. Since Zambry’s application was heard and disposed off with such efficiency, one would naturally think that Nizar’s would receive the same treatment. After all, it is a fundamental rule of law that you treat like parties equally. Both of them are litigants and so both should be treated fairly and so equally. But Nizar’s application was fixed four days after on 18.5.2009. To add insult to injury, on 15.5.2009, Nizar’s solicitors were informed that the Court of Appeal pushed the hearing date later to 21.5.2009, which was the same day as the substantive appeal itself. This naturally resulted in Nizar’s application being ‘academic’ or to call a spade a spade, useless. The present Chief Justice is fond of saying, justice delayed is justice denied. Well, this was precisely such an instance.
The difference in treatment between Zambry’s and Nizar’s applications are like heaven and hell. The delay on part of the Court of Appeal to hear Nizar’s setting aside application, deliberate or otherwise, also provokes one to wonder whether there were hidden hands hell-bent on preventing Nizar from continuing to perform his duty as a Menteri Besar despite the High Court decision which was made a day earlier?
Another curious issue is exceptional instance of the granting of the stay order by a single Court of Appeal Judge, Ramly Ali JCA, who was elevated barely a month prior to his order. Furthermore, his Lordship’s decision has been widely criticized in the legal fraternity as being surreal if not downright perverse for this simple reason: it is an established principle of law that declaratory orders cannot be stayed.
The nature of the orders made by the High Court in the present case is declaratory in nature. It must be understood that “declaratory orders” are different from orders which are “executory” in nature. “Declaratory orders”, as the name suggests, merely declare:
(i) the true interpretation of the law or document; and
(ii) the legal position or rights between the parties.
The effect of that is that declaratory orders does not create or confer rights. Such an order merely pronounces on the actual legal position and/or factual scenario in question. For example, you may seek a declaration that there was X is your son. If you are successful in your application, then the court will declare that X is your son. How do you stay an order like that? For argument’s sake, let’s say we do. Does that mean X is not your son if the opposing party grants a stay of the order and throughout the duration of the order? No. And that is why courts do not grant a stay order on a declaratory order. It’s a nonsensical thing to do. Furthermore, another distinctive feature of a declaratory order is that once they are pronounced by the Court, the legal rights or legal positions vis-a-vis the parties are settled. No further legal steps or proceedings need to follow.
‘Executory orders’ on the other hand declare the right of the parties and then proceed to order the defendant to act in a particular way, e.g. to pay damages or money owed and such orders can be enforced by execution proceedings if disobeyed.
In the present case, the orders made clearly did not create or confer any rights upon Nizar to be the Menteri Besar as Nizar has always been the Menteri Besar. Instead, the order merely indicates the position as it has always been i.e. that Nizar is Menteri Besar of Perak at all material times. The High Court order did not confer something which was did not exist in the first place.
In view of the unique nature of declaratory orders as described above, where an appeal is lodged against a declaratory order, there can be no stay of proceedings, legally or sensibly. Now even assuming for the briefest moment you can imagine, that the Court of Appeal Judge was correct in granting the stay order, the next question the Judge should ask himself is whether the stay order would achieve any legal and tangible purpose or is it an exercise in futility? Does the stay order confer power upon Zambry for him to perpetuate his misguided notion that he is the Menteri Besar of Perak? Can the Court of Appeal grant a stay over a constitutional matter?
If things had gone as planned in 1986, the conservative Alabama prosecutor would have been confirmed to a lifetime appointment to a federal judgeship. But allegations of racism cast Sessions as a throwback to the Jim Crow South, and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted down his nomination. Stunned and embarrassed, Sessions returned home to Mobile as a man undone.
Soon he turned to politics, was elected to the Senate and joined the very committee that denied him a seat on the federal bench. He ascended from behind the scenes to the panel’s top Republican spot, and it now falls to him to weigh the GOP’s competing interests and political calculations while guiding the fractured party through the upcoming confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Yesterday, the judge went to the Capitol for private meetings with Sessions and other key senators.
With her nomination, race (and ethnicity) once again looms as a major subplot. This time, though, Sessions is on the other side of the rostrum, and there are some who wonder how he will handle it. Will Sessions go after Sotomayor the way Senate Democrats vilified him long ago? Or has the experience made him more empathetic to nominees who face tough questioning?
“I’ve felt sorry for the poor person in the pit getting grilled,” Sessions said in a recent interview. “I don’t think you’ll find that I’ve abused any witness. And I don’t like vindication.”
Sotomayor, facing pressure from lawmakers to explain her comments from 2001 that her Latina identity matters in how she reaches conclusions, told Democratic and Republican senators yesterday that she would follow the law.But it was a Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who pressed her most directly to clarify her remarks. Leahy said that she told him, “Of course one’s life experience shapes who you are,” but that she added: “Ultimately and completely, a judge has to follow the law, no matter what their upbringing has been.”
Sessions said Sotomayor — who will resume her visits with lawmakers today — used similar language with him, but he conceded, “I don’t know that we got into that significantly.” Rather the two spent more time discussing “the moral authority of laws and judges.” He said he “enjoyed the conversation.”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, 62, is an unlikely choice to be the face of the GOP at such a critical juncture. At times, he has appeared uncomfortable in the spotlight. When Sotomayor visited his office yesterday, the white-haired senator who speaks with a heavy Southern accent sat before a throng of cameras clutching his hands together and nervously tapping his right foot.
As the committee’s ranking Republican, taking over after Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) switched parties this spring, Sessions sets the priorities of a party already facing a deep split between conservatives and moderates. He is considering comments by radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) that Sotomayor is racist, but he also is conscious of turning off Latino voters by questioning Sotomayor too aggressively.
And then there is the political reality: Sessions has just one vote, and Republicans have seven, on a committee of 19.
“It’s a tough job because you’re the principal negotiator and point man for your party,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “But Jeff is not a shrinking violet by any stretch of the imagination.”But it was a Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who pressed her most directly to clarify her remarks. Leahy said that she told him, “Of course one’s life experience shapes who you are,” but that she added: “Ultimately and completely, a judge has to follow the law, no matter what their upbringing has been.”
Sessions said Sotomayor — who will resume her visits with lawmakers today — used similar language with him, but he conceded, “I don’t know that we got into that significantly.” Rather the two spent more time discussing “the moral authority of laws and judges.” He said he “enjoyed the conversation.”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, 62, is an unlikely choice to be the face of the GOP at such a critical juncture. At times, he has appeared uncomfortable in the spotlight. When Sotomayor visited his office yesterday, the white-haired senator who speaks with a heavy Southern accent sat before a throng of cameras clutching his hands together and nervously tapping his right foot.
As the committee’s ranking Republican, taking over after Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) switched parties this spring, Sessions sets the priorities of a party already facing a deep split between conservatives and moderates. He is considering comments by radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) that Sotomayor is racist, but he also is conscious of turning off Latino voters by questioning Sotomayor too aggressively.
And then there is the political reality: Sessions has just one vote, and Republicans have seven, on a committee of 19.
“It’s a tough job because you’re the principal negotiator and point man for your party,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “But Jeff is not a shrinking violet by any stretch of the imagination.”Sessions has promised a rigorous review of Sotomayor’s record and warned that there may be a “drop in deference to the president” because he said Democrats were “very, very aggressive” in questioning President George W. Bush’s nominees. He also is resisting calls from Obama and Leahy to confirm Sotomayor by Aug. 7, when the Senate breaks for a recess. Yesterday, he said he wants hearings to take place in October.
Beloved by conservatives, Sessions has been a vocal opponent of allowing undocumented immigrants the chance to become U.S. citizens. But unlike many of his colleagues on the panel, he lacks a national profile and a signature issue. Some in Alabama describe Sessions as “vanilla.”
Yet what the 5-foot-5 senator lacks in bravado, he makes up for in discipline, practiced over hours as a Sunday-school teacher at his family’s Methodist church, 14 years in the Army Reserve and decades as a lawyer. An early riser, he often goes to the Capitol gym before 7 a.m., running on the treadmill and hashing over bills with Cornyn.
Known as a nuts-and-bolts senator, Sessions arrives at committee meetings having done his homework, colleagues said. The Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” is engraved on a stone on his office desk.
His steady handling thus far of the Sotomayor nomination has earned praise from across the aisle.
“We may well disagree on the final outcome of the nomination, but I think he’s handled it in a very statesmanlike fashion,” Leahy said.
Sessions’s courtroom experience lends credibility to his arguments, his Republican colleagues said. As someone who supports a strict interpretation of the Constitution, he believes that no judge should be swayed by personal or political allegiances, and he takes issue with Obama’s statement that judges should have “empathy . . . with people’s hopes and struggles.” Sessions called this a “postmodern infection” that threatens law.
“We need to articulate why it’s important that judges show restraint and that every American can believe that when they call that ball a ball and that strike a strike it was an honest call, not because they were pulling for one side or another,” he said.
If Sotomayor’s America is the South Bronx in New York, then Sessions’s is Hybart, Ala. The two locales couldn’t be more different. Sotomayor chased her dreams as a Latina in the city projects, playing loteria, a card game, with neighborhood kids. She once bragged about her cultural taste in food as a young lady, eating such delicacies as pig intestines, pigs’ feet with beans, and pigs’ tongue and ears.
Sessions, meanwhile, came of age in a vast, bucolic land. He grew up in a modest country house and went hunting and fishing. He worked with his father around the general store the family owned. Every bit the good Alabama boy, Sessions became an Eagle Scout just before enrolling at Huntingdon College, a small Methodist school in nearby Montgomery.
In the 1960s, as the world around him changed dramatically, Sessions said he was disengaged from the civil rights movement, becoming engrossed instead with the conservative politics of the National Review. He said he regrets not having taken a lead in fighting for civil rights.
“I guess I was more like the average Alabamian,” he said. “Most of my contemporaries, including myself, we probably could have been more affirmative in taking stands on those issues.”
Sessions said the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books and the TV show “Dragnet” inspired him to become a lawyer. (Sotomayor, too, cites Nancy Drew novels as an inspiration.)
After President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. attorney in Mobile in 1981, Sessions brought charges of voter fraud against three black civil rights activists, including a former aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They were acquitted.
In 1986, Reagan nominated him for the federal bench, and accusations of racial insensitivities hung over his Senate hearings. Sessions called the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” and “communist-inspired” and said they tried to “force civil rights down the throats of people,” according to sworn statements. He was accused of calling a black assistant “boy.” And he once said of the Ku Klux Klan “I used to think they’re okay” until learning that some members were “pot smokers,” according to sworn statements.
After Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) led the fight against Sessions, calling him “a throwback to a disgraceful era,” Sessions responded: “That is the most painful thing I have ever heard. . . . It breaks my heart.”
The Judiciary Committee approved 269 Reagan nominees to the federal bench before ever voting one down. Sessions was the first, and he left Washington without even the support of his home-state senator on the panel, Howell Heflin (D).
Recalling the episode, Sessions said his comments had been distorted to smear him. “It was so embarrassing to have people think that I didn’t believe in equality, that I was racist or had discriminatory intent,” he said. “This was horrible. That was not so.”
For Sessions, the Sotomayor hearings provide a chance to recover.
“He’s spent much of his career on the far side of the gulf from the civil rights community, from the party now in power, from people like Sonia Sotomayor,” said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous. “We hope that he will distinguish himself not just as a leader of the Senate, but distinguish himself from his own history of making divisive comments.”
So far, Sessions and Sotomayor have gotten off to a smooth start. When they first met yesterday, they exchanged laughs. By the time Sotomayor left after 30 minutes of closed-door conversation, the Southern senator and Latina judge appeared as if they had found common ground — perhaps over Nancy Drew.
Staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.
I refer to the Malaysiakini reportManohara: I was treated like an animal.
Apparently our deputy prime minister does not see the real issue here – it is no longer a ‘personal problem.’ It is an allegation of abduction and rape and those are criminal acts and the prince is not immune from criminal prosecution if this is the case.
The name of the nation is at stake as a royal prince has had criminal allegations made out against him. There have been allegations of a person attempting to inject Ms Manohara Odelia Pinot with a substance, there have been reports that the prince was shouting at her when she left and there have also been reports that the prince allowed her to leave.
Even if the Indonesian president ‘arranged’ it, out of sheer respect for the Indonesian people, he (the prime minister) should have met the Indonesian press.
Manohara Odelia Pinot (right) with her sister Dewi Sari Asih
A person found guilty of committing these acts can be charged under the Penal Code.
Manohara and Asih
ON 7 MAY 2009, 69 of us were arrested. During the full-day interrogation I have not been told why I was being arrested. Today I still do not know why they arrested me. But tomorrow morning at the Magiostrate Court in Ipoh, if I am being charged I will definitely know why I was arrested. Until tomorrow I am still ignorant. But they should charge us, yes?
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