It was our first meeting, we
just followed Dr M, Loke
says on Batu Puteh
The DAP secretary-general says the Cabinet’s endorsement was a formality as the then prime minister had already decided to drop the legal applications.
He said the May 2018 Cabinet meeting had merely “endorsed” Mahathir’s decision to drop two legal applications regarding Batu Puteh.
He said he and other Pakatan Harapan ministers simply followed Mahathir’s decision, which he maintained had been made beforehand, as a formality.
“We went along with it because it was our first Cabinet meeting. Many of us didn’t even know what a Cabinet memorandum looked like.
“The prime minister raised the matter verbally, and we thought the decision was already made. It was just an endorsement of his earlier decision.
“Only later on did we know that Cabinet decisions needed to be made based on Cabinet memorandums… Looking back, this was not the case (for the Batu Puteh decision),” Loke told reporters on the sidelines of the Malaysia-China Summit 2024 here.
Loke, who was transport minister in Mahathir’s 2018-2020 Cabinet, stood by his statement on the Batu Puteh issue, particularly that the decision at the time was made without going through a thorough process.
Loke, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and Mohamad Sabu previously claimed they had no opportunity to state their stance on the Batu Puteh issue when it was raised by Mahathir during the Cabinet meeting.
The PH trio had said there was no room for any decision-making as Mahathir had already made the decision in writing, referring to a letter the then prime minister had sent to the solicitor-general on the matter.
However, Mahathir said the minutes of the Cabinet meeting would show that they were lying.
He asserted that they and other ministers had agreed to drop the applications to review and interpret the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2018 ruling on Batu Puteh.
Loke referred back to the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s (RCI) report on the issue, particularly that the government’s decision-making process lacked proper documentation and consultation.
“The RCI report concluded that such an important issue, involving national sovereignty, should have gone through a more thorough process.
“There were no papers for us to refer to, no detailed briefing and no input from relevant agencies. We had nothing to base our decisions on,” Loke added.
The RCI report said Mahathir had written to the solicitor-general on May 21, 2018, stating that the ICJ applications “need not be continued”. The solicitor-general then informed Singapore that Malaysia would be dropping both legal applications.
The RCI said Singapore was informed of this at 9am on May 23, 2018. The Cabinet only met at 9.30am that day and discussed the issue later in the meeting under “other matters”.
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