In the extremely boring and protracted Altantuya Murder Trial, The Sun recently ran an interesting headline: Credibility of witness should not be impeached: Counsel.”

The report said the credibility of defence witness, Yusri Basri, should not be impeached. It went on to say that instead of impeaching Yusri’s credibility, his testimony should be viewed together with the credibility of contradictory statements made by the prosecution’s own witnesses.

This raises the question of “credibility of contradictory statements.” Is this itself a contradiction of terms?

Not really, according to the New Straits Times’ report: “Hasnal (one of the defence counsel) argued that Yusri’s police statement merely said he was not sure, and when he had the time to think it over, he gave his correct answers to court.”

“This does not amount to contradictions and does not shake his credibility,” he added.

The Star in its sub-head said, “Witness merely changed his account from ‘not sure’ to ‘sure.’” It said there were no contradictions between the testimony and Yuri’s statement to the police. This was because defence counsel “argued that moving from a ‘not sure’ answer to one in which he was ‘sure’ did not amount to a contradiction.

“…As such, the court should not impeach his credibility,” the report said.

In plain English, what this means is that it’s alright if one is not sure when making a statement to the police as one can always mull over what has been said and recorded and later come to court and say one was not sure earlier. This phenomenon is now known as “The credibility of contradictory statements.”

What is impeachable here? The credibility, evidence, testimony, or the witness?

A dictionary meaning of impeachment is that of challenging the credibility of, a demonstration that a witness is less worthy of belief, therefore a witness is such circumstances is impeached.

By definition, credibility can be challenged but cannot be impeached. Why so? If a witness is challenged and demonstrated that he is less worthy of belief, then he has no credibility. Therefore, his evidence is not accepted as trustworthy. So we begin impeachment proceedings against him to remove the witness and his evidence as without credibility.

However, if his testimony is challenged and found to be credible, then the court cannot impeach his credibility. Why? Because it is credible.

Unlike The Sun and The Star reports, the NST report was clear that the subject in question of the impeachment process was the witness. The NST said, in part, that a police witness (Yusri) who had testified last year should not be impeached.

Mid-way through the report, it again emphasised this: “The prosecution subsequently applied to impeach Yusri (the witness) following four contradictory pieces of evidence between the police statement and his evidence in court.”

The moral of the story? One has to buy three newspapers to find out what is impeachable in the Mongolian Woman Murder Trial.

In a related issue, can we impeach Private Investigator P. Balasubramaniam, who was a key witness to the trial? He had given his testimony a little while ago. But recently he dropped a bombshell by making a statutory declaration outside of the trial linking Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor to the murder. He withdrew the allegations within 24 hours.

Does P.I. Bala now fall under the same category as the Yusri phenomenon of the “credibility of contradictory statements”? No. He has gone missing since.

To add to the court drama, indomitable and incorrigible blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin , or RPK as he is popularly known in blogosphere, has also made a statutory declaration linking Najib and Rosmah to the on-going murder trial. So is his evidence impeachable?

No, because the prosecution did not want him to be a witness, so his opinion does not matter one iota. But he caught the attention of the Attorney General’s Office which has since charged him for criminal defamation instead of hearing him out in the murder trial.

Another definition of impeachment is to accuse a public official at an appropriate tribunal of misconduct in office.

In the U.S. we remember, of course, the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky episode. He availed himself to the phenomenon of the “credibility of contradictory statements” and escaped virtually unscathed.

In an earlier impeachment, President Richard Nixon was not so lucky. His misconduct in public office was not so much over the Watergate scandal but that he had lied about it.

Coming back to Malaysia, can we bring impeachment proceedings against Najib as a public official? The answer is probably no. This is because, the matter is now a subject of another court case where RPK’s statutory declaration will be challenged as to whether it is worthy of belief.

Besides, it can be argued that the attempt to link Najib to the murder trial has nothing to do with misconduct of office on his part.

Now that sodomy is back in vogue, can we impeach Anwar Ibrahim. No, of course. Simply because he’s not holding public office. Ten years ago the AG had the opportunity to impeach him as he was then the Deputy Prime Minister. But criminal charges were preferred against him instead. He has since managed to overturn the guilty verdict after a long court battle. (By BOB TEOH/ MySinchew)