The Relevance of Augustine Paul (judge, lawyer, malaysia)

The writer must be another lawyer !!

The Relevance of Augustine Paul

A meditation about the difficulty of celebrating the accomplishments or
mourning the death of Augustine Paul, the Federal Court Judge, who passed
away on 2 January 2010 from pancreatic cancer.

There is no denial that Datuk Seri S. Augustine Paul, was an accomplished
man. I have reproduced the write up about him from the Federal Court website
below in case they remove his bio-date in
due course. But let's just run by some of the highlights all the same.

Augustine Paul had a wide and varied legal experience with stints as a
Federal Counsel and thereafter sitting as a Magistrate, Senior Assistant
Registrar, a Sessions Judge before being promoted to Judicial Commissioner.
His rise after that from the High Court Judge to the Federal Court was
meteoric. He was active in hockey and church. Sacrificed his time to be an
external examiner for universities. He was intellectually active and wrote
prolifically, writing and editing several books that have become standard
references in practice, presented papers whenever he had time and
opportunity. All that on top of his job as a judge.

We would and should ordinarily be mourning his death and celebrating his
accomplishments and what he stood for in life on his death. This is natural
for such accomplishments are deserving of a celebration.

But I, and I suspect others too, have difficulty in either mourning
Augustine Paul the Judge or celebrating his achievements. But truth be told,
we want to mourn or celebrate him. After all, he is a human being like us
when we get down to it. The passing away of one is always occasion for
either, more so when that person is a Federal Court Judge, one of the
handful of judges who sit in the highest and most powerful court in our
country. But why this difficulty?

Sadly, it is due to the man himself. Augustine Paul was a judge. As one, he
was tasked with one of the most challenging and difficult job in civilized
society - to be a fountain of justice; to ensure that the waters of justice
run freely, deeply and clearly into society; to direct its course so that it
may cleanse the stained fabric of our nation. It is not a task for
everybody. It is a task for only the ablest of men and women in our society
- those who not simply possess but exemplify the virtues of honesty,
intellect, courage, a strong will, emotional stability, humility, patience,
incorruptibility, mercy and always remembering their humanity. Many fail.
Few escape with their reputation fully intact. Only a rare handful will have
the privilege of walking down the corridor of history.

Augustine Paul will not walk down that corridor. Though he may have believed
he was doing right, in the final analysis, his conduct on the bench and his
written judgments will show that he had little to do with striving for
justice. We will find that his conduct and judgments were very much in
favour of the government in power in crucial cases. This was seen most
vividly when he was a Judicial Commissioner hearing the Dato' Seri Anwar
Ibrahim trial and reinforced throught his career. And for his abilities and
judgments, he was rewarded magnificently - a Judicial Commissioner in 1996;
High Court Judge in 1998; Court of Appeal Judge in 2003 and Federal Court in
2005. A Sessions Court Judge to a Federal Court Judge in less than 10 years.


And that is where our difficulty lies: he was a judge; he took an oath to
uphold the Federal Constitution and the cause of justice; he may have
thought he did it, but that is not enough. We, the public, must feel he did
it too. If not that is not justice but merely favouring one over the other.
His oath (which can be found in the 6th Schedule of the Federal
Constitution) reads as follows:

"I, ....., having been elected (or appointed) to the office of ......... do
solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully discharge the duties of
that office to the best of my ability, that I will bear true faith and
allegiance to Malaysia, and will preserve, protect and defend its
Constitution."

'Malaysia' in that oath does not just mean the Chief Justice, the Prime
Minister or Barisan Nasional; it means all of us. That's whom his faith and
allegiance should have been to, each and every one of us - the rakyat. And
there lies the difficulty - how do you celebrate or mourn for someone who
has betrayed you so irretrievably, so steadfastly, without even a shudder of
remorse? How?

You may rightly ask, why should someone like me, who didn't like him and
complained about his judgments most of the time now feel sad about not being
able to celebrate his achievements or mourn for him? I confess I was
surprised I felt this way at all. I really thought that I would be quite
happy to read of his death and even celebrate it with friends. But when I
actually read the news report, I felt quite sad but didn't understand why.

After thinking it over, I can't claim it is the answer but the following
explanation does carry some resonance with me. As I have pointed out
earlier, Augustine Paul for all his failings, was a human being. As I am. As
we both are. And therein lies our commonality - our bond of humanity. But
obstructing our bond, are his accomplishments.

So where does this sadness come from? It burns from my inability to
reconcile myself to him because of what he did as a judge. It festers
because, for me, he refused to redeem himself as a judge by doing justice in
his final act as one. If he had written one powerful dissent despite its
futility in one of those crucial cases, that would suffice to celebrate
Augustine Paul the judge. If he did one heroic act of justice like lodge a
police report revealing the corrupt acts that have gone or are going on in
the judiciary before he left us all, we would not simply mourn Augustine
Paul the judge, but the man as well. But he did nothing.

I must make it very clear that in the above, I only consider him as a judge.
Not in other capacities. This is because I, like much of society, only know
him as a judge, nothing else. He was not my father, friend or family. He may
have been great in those other roles. But I don't know and it is none of my
business.

And this brings me to the part I cannot understand. Why do people blessed
with such power, influence and such abilities to do great and good things to
further the cause of justice do otherwise? Why do men so possessed of such
wealth of intellect, eloquence and learning soil their entire familial
heritage in the pursuit of mere money and superficial privilege?

Do they not see that they soil their own name when they do so? Do they not
see that they disgrace the name of their fathers and mothers and their
children's as well (because their names are contained there)? Do they not
see that all that money, title and things will eventually dissipate and the
only good thing we can leave our name and the good we brought to others?

Have they lost knowing the pleasure and wholesome pride it stirs in someone
when they are told their father/mother was good and honest, dependable,
someone who can be counted to act in the cause of justice, not just her
name?

I can only feel for Augustine Paul with what he has left us.

And that is an irreconcilable sadness of what could have been.

warmest regards
Lynda