KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 16 — Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad will be advised to skip the Malaysian government’s Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on the sovereignty of several islets near Johor and Singapore, if former chief justice Tun Md Raus Sharif remains as the RCI chairman, Dr Mahathir’s lawyer said today.
Muhammad Rafique Rashid Ali claimed that the federal government’s February 14 appointment of Raus as chairman of the Batu Puteh RCI was a “violation of natural justice” as he is allegedly an “interested party”.
Rafique said this was due to past events where Dr Mahathir had in 2017 mounted a court challenge on the legality of Raus’ extended tenure as a judge and Raus’s 2018 resignation as chief justice when Dr Mahathir returned as prime minister.
Rafique also said it is “common knowledge” that the RCI revolves around the Malaysian government’s May 31, 2018 decision — when Dr Mahathir was prime minister — to withdraw two review applications at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the latter’s May 23, 2008 decision on the sovereignty of Batu Puteh.
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“The RCI should be seen as clean and impartial so that the public will not question the credibility of the same,” Rafique wrote in a statement today.
Rafique claimed that the appointment of Raus as the RCI’s chairman has “created a real danger of bias in which truth and justice will not prevail”, and further claimed this would erode public confidence and affect the credibility of the RCI’s findings.
“In the upshot, due to reasons aforesaid, in the name of fairness and justice for our client Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, we would humbly request that the Government replace the Chairman of the RCI with someone who is not conflicted or that Tun Md Raus Sharif, in this pursuit of truth, to recuse himself from the position.
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“Failing which, we would be inclined to advise our client Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad to decline participating in the RCI,” he concluded.
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