Augustine, Hakim "Tidak Relevan" Meninggal Dunia

HHakim Mahkamah Persekutuan Datuk Seri S. Augustine Paul (gambar) meninggal dunia hari ini akibat penyakit kronik yang dideritainya sejak beberapa lama.

Beliau berumur 64 tahun. Beliau meninggalkan seorang isteri Datin Seri Dr Mary Paul dan dua anak iaitu Dr Juliana Sharmini, 29, dan Alan John, 27.

Beliau menghembuskan nafas terakhir pada 2.45 petang di Hospital Selayang, kata menantunya Robert Devan, 37.

Keranda yang membawa jenazahnya akan berlepas dari kediamannya di No. 16, Lorong Taman Pantai 7, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur pada pukul 2 petang Ahad ini ke Parish of St Peter di No. 441, Seksyen 96A, Jalan Changkat Riong bagi upacara pengebumian pada 2.30 petang.

Augustine, lulusan Barrister-at-Law dari Inner Temple, England, memulakan kerjaya beliau pada 1971 sebagai Peguam Persekutuan di Jabatan Peguam Negara dan kemudiannya sebagai majistret di Ipoh, Perak.

Beliau pernah berkhidmat sebagai Hakim Mahkamah Sesyen di Temerloh, Pahang, Melaka dan Pulau Pinang dan merupakan pengerusi jawatankuasa khas mengenai percukaian sebelum dilantik Hakim Mahkamah Tinggi Kuala Lumpur pada Mei, 1998. -BERNAMA

MALAYSIAN JUDGES :: HALL OF SHAME
AUGUSTINE PAUL

S. Augustine Paul a/l Sinnappen, currently Federal Court judge, subjected himself to be a political whore in 1998. While a Kuala Lumpur high court judge, he participated in the political conspiracy orchestrated by the then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad to bring down the then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. He put through a show trial of Anwar and subsequently convicted the latter of sodomy and corruption.

The conviction was clearly riddled with holes. Augustine Paul allowed the prosecution had to change the date of the alleged offence several times after Anwar’s lawyers demonstrated conclusively that he could not have been at the place at the date nominated. So crude was the frame-up that in one case the building in which the offence was alleged to have occurred, had not even been constructed.

In the end, Augustine Paul took the extraordinary step of allowing the prosecution to nominate 7.45 p.m. somewhere between January and March 1993. Even though the defence produced documents to account for Anwar’s movements for every day over that period, Augustine Paul ignored the evidence and found Anwar guilty.

By convicting Anwar, Augustine Paul solely relied on the framed up allegations of the witness, Azizan Abu Bakar, who was shown by the defence team to be unreliable.

Augustine Paul was infamously called the “irrelevant judge” for repeatedly refusing submissions of evidence by Anwar’s defence team and ruled them ‘irrelevant’.

Obviously a judicial officer without any proper talent noteworthy, he had been a sessions court judge, until one week before Anwar’s sodomy trial. He was promoted promptly to be a high court judge and took on the case. After serving his part in the political conspiracy, he was summarily promoted to be a judge of Court of Appeal on 1 August 2003, and then on to be a judge of Federal Court, the apex court in Malaysia, on 17 June 2005.

He ruled on Apr 16, 2009 that Perak Assembly Speaker V Sivakumar does not have the power to suspend Mentri Besar Datuk Zambry Abd Kadir and six state executive council members from attending the assembly. It is a decision that was made in blatant defiance of Article 72 (1) of the Federal Constitution which says,”The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”.

The judges of the Federal Court have failed the people and the government of this country when they chose to ignore the law of the Constitution of Malaysia. In other words the judges have refused to do justice according to law.

Incidentally, ultra vires does not mean “outside the law”. It means “outside one’s jurisdiction, beyond the scope of one s power or authority”. And we may ask, who is the Federal Court to say what is beyond the jurisdiction of the Speaker when the supreme law of the country says that “the validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”.

He was born October 12, 1944 in Batu Gajah, Perak. He had his early education at Sultan Yusof School, Batu Gajah and Anderson School, Ipoh. He was called to the Bar of Inner Temple, London in 1971 and obtained his Bachelor of Laws Degree from the University of London as an external student in 1979. He is married to Dr Mary with two children, Dr Juliana Sharmini and Alan John.

Ulasan GB

Tiga sudah pergi. Mohtar Abdullah, Abd Wahab Patail dan Augustine Paul,
Dua lagi: Abdul Gani Patail dan Musa Hassan.