COMMENT It is a tossup over which is the more distressing in the appellate phase of Anwar Ibrahim’s cases – the rejection of his appeals per se or the prosaic assertions offered in support of rejection?

Reading the opinion of the three-member panel that last Friday rejected Anwar’s attempt for a stay of proceedings in the sodomy case against him in the High Court induced a sense of deja vu.

The opinion was a tissue of assertions, a characteristic of judgments that have emanated from the appellate courts since February when the courts held that the removal of Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin as menteri besar of Perak by the ruler was valid.   

Last Friday, judge Sulong Matjeraie, who led a three-member Court of Appeal panel, held that the court found the ruling made by High Court judge Mohamad Zabidin Diah in not allowing for a stay of proceedings in the sodomy case against Anwar valid.

Anwar had applied for the stay after it was found that there were material contradictions between the statements made by his accuser, Mohd Saiful Bhukari Azlan, and the charge preferred against Anwar.

His application was rejected by judge Mohamad Zabidin whereupon Anwar appealed the rejection.

Last week, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal, with justice Sulong declaiming thus:  

"It does not dispose of the rights of the parties. It is not appropriate to grant a stay of proceedings pending disposal of appeal at the Court of Appeal.

"If the appellant succeed in the appeal, the learned trial judge can recall the witness (Saiful) at any stage of the proceedings before judgment, and he can be further examined."

Devoid of reasoning

If the law is a process of reasoning, it must partake as little as possible of assertion, in deference to argument and proof.  

An assertion is not an argument; it merely states something without adducing the buttress for it.  

It’s like the exchange between two adversaries who encountered each other on a narrow sidewalk. One was implacable: “I never make way for a fool.”

Tart was the reply: “On the other hand, I always do.”

Assertions, witty though they may be, do not an argument make. An argument has to deploy a proposition supported by a coherent structure of thought.

An argument is considered valid to the extent that the structure of thought on which it is based holds together.

The opinions emanating from our appellate courts in cases involving Anwar Ibrahim and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat are freighted with assertion than with reasoned argument.

They undermine the very thing that the rule of law seeks to uphold, which is a democracy’s capacity to order its public life by the moral truths that we can know by reason.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.