After yesterday afternoon’s sensational arrest of former prime minister Najib Razak, followed by this morning’s arraignment, Attorney General Tommy Thomas expected an afternoon press conference with the world’s media.
Unfortunately, due to disruptive crowds, this was canceled.
Upon entering the lobby of the court complex, the AG was met by a mob of angered Najib supporters, infuriated not over the alleged crimes and accusations at hand, but that the AG had requested that court proceedings be held in English.
He had previously expressed a better command of the English language, over Bahasa Malaysia (BM).
Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-lingual country, with BM, English, Tamil, Punjabi and several Chinese dialects being widely spoken.
You can see it illustrated right here – on these pro-Najib posters in Mandarin, calling for his release:
Mocking AG Thomas, one of the country’s leading experts in constitutional law, they later became aggressive when he entered the lobby of the Jalan Duta Courts Complex.
Chanting “Guna Bahasa Malaysia” (use Bahasa Malaysia), the crowd quickly descended into chaos, with a popular actress Ellie Suriaty Omar, having her identification card confiscated.
The celebrity is accused of instigating disruption while police tried to calm the crowd down, and officers said they will be holding on to her ID while they formally record the incident.
Trying to sooth a visibly irritated police officer, one man attempted to excuse the actress’s behavior by claiming that women were prone to “get excited” and “all kinds of things can happen!”
Right.
Explaining that the crowd was within their right to express support for their fallen leader, he reminded them that they were not only inside a federal court building, but that the country’s AG had been attempting to hold a press conference.
Earlier, he was heard instructing a gaggle of Najib supported that if they insisted on singing and chanting, they might want to do it outside. This is a court complex, not a karaoke joint, he told them.
And so, a new folk hero was born.
While Bahasa Malaysia is the official language of the country, both BM and English are used in the Malaysian court system, and it is left to the judge’s discretion as to which language to use.
One KL lawyer told us that in in his experience, senior judges preferred the use of English, and that it was lingua franca used in proceedings within the higher courts.
