PETALING JAYA: Whether the 1988 judicial crisis should be reviewed boils down to whether the people and the government want the truth to come out, the Bar Council said today (Sept 27, 2006).

Its chairman, Yeo Yang Poh, who recently called for the review, said the revelation of "new facts" by former Lord President Tun Salleh Abas yesterday makes the move more important and pertinent now.

Salleh's airing of five reasons for a review was in response to a recent statement by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz that a review can only be justified if "new and important facts" have arisen.

Nazri, in an immediate response to Salleh's "new facts", reportedly said the new information did not merit a review.

He reiterated that there must be a finality to such cases.

Said Yeo: "Are we interested, that is the question?"

He said with the new revelation by Salleh, the finality argument by Nazri did not hold water.

Yeo said there is thus a need for the government to seriously reconsider its position on the matter.

"The question is this: Does our society want the truth to come out? If so, then this exercise is all the more meaningful," he said.

Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad, who is also parliamentary Public Accounts Committee chairman, said he would support the review of the 1988 crisis, which led to Salleh's sacking and that of two other colleagues, on the basis of new evidence.

"This issue is very close to me," he said.

Shahrir said the issue was one of the reasons why he stood as an independent candidate in a by-election he won in August 1988.

"It is very personal (the sacking) and it was for this reason I had refrained from commenting on it," he said.

He said that for the matter to be re-opened, the basis or the idea as to why it should be reopened must be there.

Shahrir said the best and the utmost one can do is learn from the crisis and not repeat it.

The 1988 crisis represents the darkest period in the country's judicial history and was criticised as the executive interfering in the judiciary.