Long Live the Conspiracy Theorist

 It’s now been made official that Parti Liyani, the Indonesian maid who had been acquitted of theft by her former employer, the former Chairman of Changi Airport, Mr. Liew Mun Leong, will not be getting any compensation for the pain that she had to endure. The high court has dismissed her claim against the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) for compensation. The full report can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/high-court-judge-dismisses-parti-liyanis-bid-compensation-says-court-must-not

 

Copyright -Today

The Judge, Justice Chan Seng Onn, who had famously acquitted Ms. Liyani of theft last year, noted that she had failed to meet “the "high threshold" for proving that the prosecution was frivolous or vexatious.”

Justice Chan, argued that the public prospectors would have reviewed the evidence and found that there were significant grounds to bring the matter to court and could not be swayed by hindsight.

I am not a legal expert so I shall leave the technicalities of the findings to the better qualified.  However, as a layman observing the course of justice, it would appear that the message is quite clear – Ms. Liyani was very lucky to get acquitted and the best thing she can do is to quit while she’s ahead. If last year’s acquittal was a victory for justice, who is the dismissal for compensation against the AGC a victory for?

Well, the most obvious answer is that this is probably a victory for conspiracy theorist. One can only ask, how it was that the very same judge who found that evidence against Ms. Liyani was so lacking that it had to thrown out but a year later, that very same judge now found that the prosecutors who brought the case must have found enough to justify sending it to court.

Another question that the conspiracy theorist will undoubtedly have a field day would be on the question of what went wrong. When Ms. Liyani was acquitted last year, our Minister of Home Affairs and Justice (In the Singapore Context, writing and enforcing the laws is somehow not a conflict of interest) made some comments about how “Something had gone wrong.” The cynics at that point asked “What exactly went wrong?” Was it the obvious “miscarriage of justice” or was it the fact that the wrong person won the court case? So, if Mr. Shanmugam was talking about the later, the question now is, did someone take Justice Chan out for a cup of coffee and had a quiet word with him about getting things right?

The set back in Ms. Liyani’s quest for justice has only given conspiracy theorist plenty to talk about. The government should make an effort to get some clarity in its communication if it is to prove that we really are a society ruled by laws.