PUTRAJAYA (Sept 17): The appellate court has dismissed Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor’s appeal to recuse the judge who presided over her graft trial and to declare the proceedings, which had ended in 2022, a nullity.
A three-member Court of Appeal panel on Wednesday unanimously ruled that Rosmah’s appeal lacked merit, as she had failed to show that there was a real danger of bias in trial judge Datuk Mohamed Zaini Mazlan presiding over her graft trial, which pertains to a solar hybrid project for 369 rural schools in Sarawak.
Court of Appeal (COA) judge Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim noted that the same judge presided over the solar trial for more than two and a half years, during which time Rosmah had not made a single application to recuse Zaini.
“During that period, [Rosmah] had never made any application to recuse the trial judge until a few days before the decision [was set to be delivered]. In our minds, this shows that [Rosmah] for that period accepted the trial judge as someone who was fair, and had no doubts regarding his fairness,” Zaidi said.
The application to recuse Zaini was filed at the eleventh hour before he was slated to deliver his decision on Sept 1, 2022. It was based on the purported “leaked judgement” on the case, which Rosmah said made her lose her confidence in the judge.
She also cited articles carried by fugitive blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin’s Malaysia Today portal, where one article contained a link to download the alleged 71-page “judgement” prepared by another party. The document contained two separate “judgements” allegedly prepared by the High Court’s research unit.
Zaini — who is now a COA judge — had dismissed the application on the grounds that the two documents were opinions written by the court’s research team, which were neither prepared for him, nor prepared on his instructions. The decision was made after parties had presented lengthy arguments on the same day.
He said the documents were mere opinion, and he did not refer to them when he arrived at his decision. Following this, Zaini immediately delivered his decision on the main solar case.
The other judges on the COA panel on Wednesday were Datuk Azman Abdullah and Datuk Noorin Badaruddin.
The panel also noted that they went through appeal records and examined the purported “leaked judgement”, and Zaini’s actual judgement.
“After we examined the documents, to our minds, it is clear that there is a stark difference in the two documents, [which shows] that the trial judge prepared his own judgement,” Zaidi said.
Rosmah has indicated that she will be appealing this decision.
It has to be noted that this is not the main appeal on the solar case. Rosmah is appealing her guilty verdict of all three counts of graft, in which she was sentenced to 10 years’ jail and fined a whopping RM970 million — the largest amount ever imposed by the High Court for a graft case.
On Wednesday, Datuk Jagjit Singh, Datuk Akberdin Abdul Kader, Azrul Zulkifli Stork, and Datuk Firoz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin appeared for Rosmah.
The prosecution is led by Appellate and Trial Division (Trials Unit) head at the Attorney General’s Chambers, Mangaiarkarasi Krishnan.