Saturday, October 23, 2010

THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE HABEAS CORPUS APPLICATION TO FREE SULTAN ISMAIL PETRA

Considering the seriousness at which Datuk Param Cumaraswamy, Datuk Mohd Haaziq Pillay, Raja Aziz Addruse, Gobind Singh Deo, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar and Abdul Rashid Ismail had been going on with their habeas corpus application to free Sultan Ismail Petra from allegedly being held against his will, even after Sultan Ismail Petra was already free to be brought anywhere, it was extremely strange that they all of a sudden decided to withdraw that application on 21 October 2010.

Whatever their reason was, whether because they all of a sudden realized that they were staring at an embarrassing defeat or whether because they all of a sudden realized that it was an exercise in futility, we have been a bit disturbed by their less than gentlemanly conduct in handling this matter. Considering the wide publicity that they had been giving to this application, they should have had the civility and the dignity to tell the people of their withdrawing it too.

Well, Gobind Singh Deo was recorded as saying something to the Star about it (thestaronline.tv/default.aspx?vid=6257 which was, strangely enough, removed from the newspaper's website later on) which resulted in that newspaper announcing on 21 October 2010, 07:29 PM, that “The Special Court in Putrajaya struck out a habeas corpus by former Kelantan ruler Tuanku Ismail Petra Sultan Yahya Petra after he withdrew it”, but why there was not any press conference as usual, Mister?