“I know he (Haniff) is a lawyer of great reputation, but as a professional accountant, I find his statement arrogant and condescending. An attitude which is common among law practitioners in the country,” he told FMT when contacted.
Nur Jazlan was responding to Haniff telling him, recently, to stop misleading the public into thinking that expressing dissent towards the government was a crime.
The lawyer of former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad had said if Nur Jazlan was not familiar with the law, he should seek the views of his officers rather than make statements intended to scare the public.
Nur Jazlan said: “He (Haniff) is entitled to his opinion, but he shouldn’t have passed on his personal judgment of me.
“Don’t assume that I don’t ask for advice from my ministry officials.”
Saying the “definition of the law” was about the interpretation of the purposes and meanings of statutes, Nur Jazlan added:
“My interpretation would be different to his. At the end of the day, when the legal matter is brought to the courts, the judges would have to decide, not just the two of us.”
In a news report yesterday, Nur Jazlan was quoted as saying “who says we are not investigating Mahathir under Section 124C. Whether or not we want to take this to the next stage is a different matter”.
At present, several individuals and organisations, including Lawyers for Liberty, the Bar Council, Bersih 2.0 and MalaysiaKini, are being investigated by the authorities under Section 124C of the Penal Code for allegedly attempting to undermine parliamentary democracy.
Authorities opened investigations recently after US website DC leaks published a leaked document outlining plans by a foreign group intent on “meddling in Malaysian politics” through a programme called the “Malaysia Program”.
The document is of leaked minutes of a meeting, allegedly involving members of the George Soros-linked Open Society Foundations (OSF).
Over the years, Soros has been linked to pro-democracy activities in Eastern Europe and has also been accused of being involved in currency manipulation.
Soros became a household name in Malaysia in the late 1990s when Mahathir, the then prime minister, accused him of engineering the 1997 Asian financial crisis.