By Clara Chooi - The Malaysian Insider
IPOH, Dec 15 – Police today asked a counsel for former Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin to give a statement on the allegedly forged resignation letter submitted by Jelapang assemblyman Hee Yit Foong earlier this year.
The document had apparently been submitted as evidence in the Nizar vs Zambry (Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abd Kadir) suit and had been claimed by Hee herself as false.
The now Barisan Nasional-friendly Independent, Hee, had earlier lodged a police report on the matter, claiming that the date stated in the letter, Feb 3, 2009, had been falsified.
Nizar’s lawyer, Leong Cheok Keng, was summoned today to the Sungai Senam police station to give a statement to the commercial crime investigation department on the issue.
After his 45-minute statement, Cheong told The Malaysian Insider that he believed the police had summoned him because he had represented Nizar in the suit, in which the allegedly forged document had been presented as evidence.
“It actually puts me in a very difficult position because I could not offer much information since my client had not given me express consent to reveal the information between himself and me as his counsel,” he said.
Cheong cited the Evidence Act 1950 which states that no lawyer can disclose any communication made to him in the course of his employment on behalf of his client.
“If I had revealed, I would have to face the board of advocates and solicitors. My client would have the right to lodge a complaint against me,” he said.
He added that in giving his statement, he had no choice but to reserve information that he felt would infringe on the act.
“The police were cooperative on the matter however,” he said.
Cheong, however, also voiced confusion that in Hee’s police report, the assemblyman had only claimed that the date on the resignation letter had been falsified and not the entire document proper.
“It is confusing because it is either the document itself that is forged or not,” he said.
Hee’s resignation letter, along with two others — former PKR men Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi and Mohd Osman Mohd Jailu — had been allegedly submitted to former Perak Speaker V Sivakumar during the start of the state’s constitutional crisis in February this year.
Sivakumar had then declared the three’s seats vacant, paving the way for by-elections, which however was rejected by the Election Commission.
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