Tommy Thomas must be charged for breaking the law

AGC office

1. Amongst the blunders committed by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Tun) when he was appointed the 7th Prime Minister (PM7), one of the biggest was his choice of the Attorney-General (AG). Against conventional wisdom, Tun appointed Tommy Thomas (TT), a practising lawyer who had no background at all in the civil service, and almost zero knowledge in criminal prosecution as the AG who by the force of the Federal Constitution is also the Public Prosecutor (of course , the AG was appointed by the Seri Paduka Baginda Yang di-Pertuan Agong, but the Agong must act on the advice of the Prime Minister who in this case only nominated one name for the post).

2. Not only does the appointment create unnecessary havoc in the smooth running of the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), it also unforgivingly damages the reputation of the man self-styling himself as the reforming AG, to the point of no return. Truth be told, quite a lot of AGC officers held TT in some regard before he came into office, by virtue of his private practice records.

3. Unfortunately, the longer TT were serving as the AG, the greater those regards were destroyed, and by the time he left office, there’s almost none. The publication of his memoir just put the final nail in his coffin. It is now clear to the whole world that TT was not only incompetent and out of his depth in performing his functions and duties as the AG, but the book also confirms that he’s dishonourable and treacherous by selling the official and secret information of the State which came into his knowledge when he was the AG, and also by divulging the discussions held with numerous stakeholders in relation to the criminal prosecutions which are still ongoing and yet to be instituted.

4. During his short tenure, to the surprise of the AGC officers, TT also displayed amazing lack of knowledge on some of the broad legal fields that he as the AG is supposed to supervise and manage. What is even more damaging is, in those instances, rather than accept his limitations, he refused to listen to the advice and opinion given by the learned officers of the AGC, but pressed on with his seemingly “correct” position.

There’s an instance related to an international matter whereby TT was giving views in contradiction to the opinion of his own expert officers in a meeting before Tun, and unsurprisingly (and surely a bitter pill to TT) Tun agreed with the position taken by the officers rather than the AG!

5. Now, about his criminal prosecution litigation skills, the less it’s talked about, the better it is for him. In fact, the DPPs were very much relieved when he’s not doing the cross examination of witnesses with them, as the examples shown by him when he’s doing it (in just one case, fortunately, as he’s very busy in “other duties of office”) was even more damaging to the case of the prosecution than the questions posed by the defence counsel! But did he ever admit in the book that he’s hopeless as a prosecutor? Never in this life.

6. In all honesty, we can actually write a book to illustrate the sheer incompetence of TT as the AG, his inability to handle the enormous task of being not only the number one legal advisor to the Government, but also the head of department of the biggest legal firm in the country and his unfounded prejudice and lack of trust to his own officers in AGC.

7. The book was just an attempt by TT to salvage his tarnished reputation as the worst ever AG in the history of Malaysia, and to helplessly justify all his actions as the AG. In doing so, he blatantly disregarded the oath of secrecy and pledge of confidentiality that an AG is supposed to uphold to, and which is a direct contravention of the Official Secret Act that he as the former AG should have been very much aware of.

In conclusion, TT must be charged for breaking the law.