Trust the AG? Forget it!

And so we are expected to believe the sudden turning up of a note in the late Teoh Beng Hock's bag, which several blogs have claimed is a suicide note. That it only surfaced a year after his death after being questioned at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office in Shah Alam raises a lot more questions. The Malaysian Insider asks the right questions here about the sudden appearance of the note. The Attorney-General's office has offered a lame excuse that it was shocked by it too and that they have now sent the note for authenticity check.

Apparently the Investigating Officer ASP Ahmad Nazri Zainal found the note on Oct 7, more than two months after Teoh’s death last year. Why did it take so long if the first thing one would do is to check contents and forensics for any traces of evidence? And then this ASP didn't do anything about it because the documents in the bag were written in Chinese and in Roman characters. Huh? Got meh like that? I think these fellas seriously should just watch CSI or NCIS to get a tip or two. He really didn't think to get it checked and translated? What kind of investigating officers do we have really? On the one hand, the want the right to exercise the powers unchecked and then they fail miserably at what is really the core of their work. Maybe if the force didn't spend too much focusing on public dissent and civil society protests or candlelight vigils, they might be able to perform their jobs better.

By the way, what were the Umno people doing with this information of the note before it even reached the coroner officially? If Mohd Ezam Nor, now Senator, after jumping ships several times, (caution: reader is advised to doubt his credibility as much as possible) can raise a question in Parliament about the note before it found was submitted to the coroner, is the police and Umno in collusion then? Well, we've always suspected that, but here's another instance proving it! Is somebody in MACC and the AG's office leaking information, possibly to cast doubt over Teoh and the defence, and just before the Thai forensic pathologist Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunand is scheduled to testify again? Lawyer Gobind Singh Doe who is representing Teoh's family was of course mad about the situation, who wouldn't be?

There are several blogs out there of course criticising Gobind, saying the inquest is ongoing so no such thing as withholding evidence. But if the evidence was there in the first place a year ago, it should have been tendered and informed since the government had always wanted to show that Teoh took his own life. And Gobind is right: the line of questioning and witnesses to be called would have been different if this evidence was made known earlier.

But you can bet that most Malaysians are and will be very suspicious of the AG [who has done little in his time to show that he is a person with integrity] and our enforcement agencies, yet again. We can only hope the coroner will act fairly in the ongoing inquest.