Today, Syed Saddiq is going to find out whether he is going to be free of the legal problem that has been burdening him for the last six years, or whether today is the day he is going to spend the remainder of his youth in jail.
He was actually supposed to find out a couple of weeks ago, but in a very peculiar turn of events, three Federal Court judges refused to deliver the verdict, although he had already come to court and although they already had a verdict in hand, for a reason that, I at least, felt was... odd.
Of the three judges, one fell sick at the last minute and couldn't show up.
Another seemed to just be... missing without explanation.
The only judge who showed up then said that he was not going to read the verdict because he just didn't feel comfortable reading it all by his lonesome.
So did he postpone the reading for a couple of hours until his missing colleague could be located?
Nope. He decided to postpone it for a full two weeks.
Two full weeks to read a rather short and already prepared verdict that would have likely taken no more than a few minutes to complete.
I also don't know what to say about this.
If I want to say that maybe the long adjournment was out of consideration that the Johor election was scheduled on July 11, and the court thought that Syed Saddiq, being the Muar MP, whose party MUDA was running in the election, should be given space and time to make his campaign rounds, that can't be it.
It can't, because Syed Saddiq, obviously disturbed by having to wait two more weeks to find out whether the axe was going to fall on his neck, chose not to participate in the Johor election campaign, for a reason that I am sure all of us can easily understand.
But turning a blind eye to that—because you will go crazy in our country if you are not able to turn a blind eye to many things—today, the two weeks are over, and today, Syed Saddiq will finally find out what happens to his freedom for the next few years.
After thinking about it for a while, despite my instincts are whispering, I must say that I do hope that Syed Saddiq will find his day going well today.
I can't say I am very fond of Syed Saddiq as a politician. In my eyes, Syed Saddiq reminds me of politicians like the former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or the current French President Emmanuel Macron. I am personally more in favour of leaders like Putin or Xi Jinping to have much of a taste for politicians like Syed Saddiq.
As a political commentator, I also think that he is a better celebrity than a politician.
But in terms of his court case, I hope he is set free, because as a political commentator, the fact that I still don't understand what it is that he is being charged for makes me believe that, like Hanlon's Razor says, whatever it is that he did can probably be attributed more to a mistake than to malice.
I tend not to think of crime as complicated, even if its execution is complicated.
The execution of the 1MDB theft, for example, was indeed very complicated. It spanned the entire world, involved many companies, personalities, and probably so many transactions that they could probably fill up thousands of pages. But in the end, the crime itself was simple—it was about Najib moving the nation's wealth out of the national coffers into his own pocket.
The 1MDB trial was long, many lawyers were involved, and there were a great many things that were talked about. But at the end of the day, for me, what the entire thing was about was about proving whether dear old Bossku used his position to put the nation's money into his own pocket or not.
In the 1MDB trial, as a regular person, I was convinced enough that Najib did indeed move a large amount of money from the national coffers into his own wealth that his sentencing seemed justified.
I know a lot of you might object to his sentencing, but I don't think any of you actually doubt that Najib did move an obscenely large amount of money from the national coffers into his own pocket.
You might think he was justified in doing it, the way you might think that Robin Hood was justified in moving the treasures from the Sheriff of Nottingham's treasury into his private custody. But what I am sure you have no doubt about is that Najib did move money from the nation's custody into his own private custody.
In Syed Saddiq's case, though, I don't know. Although it has been years since he has been in and out of court, I still can't really put my finger on what it is that he did wrong.
Now, when I think about it, there are two reasons why I still haven't been able to clearly grasp what it is that Syed Saddiq has done wrong.
The first is that Syed Saddiq and his accomplices are genius thieves who executed a crime that was so perfect that only future generations will be able to fully figure it out.
The second is that maybe it was all just a mistake or a screw-up.
Nobody ever really understands why a screw-up happens. If you ever lost your wallet or phone, and you tried to figure out how it came to the stage that you lost it, there is probably no one good explanation that explains it all. There are probably 101 little things—from the fact that your wife distracted you, to the fact that you were hungry, to the fact that the traffic light suddenly turned green—that caused you to screw up and lose your phone later in the day, although you had never done it before.
Vibe-wise, as a political commentator who makes it my business to know about these things, I am getting much more of an "it was a screw-up" than an "it was a crime" vibe from whatever it is that Syed Saddiq is being charged with.
Considering that, I must say that I find it a little jarring that such ferocious and relentless intensity has been applied into getting this 33-year-old former Youth Minister to pay for his first time and quite pedantic "crime".
In a land where Zahid Hamidi can get 47 DNAAs without anyone batting an eyelid, I don't see why we have to be so single-minded in going after Syed Saddiq for a crime so vague that even intelligent people find it difficult to describe.
So it is on this basis that I hope, as a member of the public, that Syed Saddiq's day will go well today.
As a political commentator, my gut instinct is that... ahhh... forget about my gut instinct ... it's still too early in the morning to be starting in such a pessimistic note....
So I will just end this by saying that, as a member of the public, I hope that Syed Saddiq's day will go well.
Break a leg!
May the fates be kind, and may fortune favour you, dear YB.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.
