No, the humble comma did nothing.

In most instances, the humble comma has a good reason to remain humble. It has a role to play but as any linguist will tell you, there used to be a time when it made its appearance a great deal more than it does today. Advocates of the Oxford comma have ingeniously come up with the 'I saw the pope, a rapist and child molester' joke but it remains a joke and is only good for a laugh. Whatever anyone tells you, the absence of a comma is very rarely the cause of a misunderstanding. Where a comma is needful, the writer will assuredly supply one.

Recently, the Malaysian Court of Appeal gave a judgment in Malaysia's former Prime Minister Najib Razak's appeal and A. Kathirasen, a Malaysian journalist, published an entertaining article singing the praise of the humble comma with the sensational title How the Humble Comma Sank Najib's SRC Defence. Did the humble comma really do that?  

To understand the role the comma played in that case, we have to look at Section 402A of the Malaysian Penal Code.  

Screen grab from Kathirasen's article

That the three limbs of the definition of 'director' must be read disjunctively is not in dispute. It's absurd and preposterous to even suggest a conjunctive reading. The Court of Appeal is absolutely right in its decision. But did the comma have any role to play here? Kathirasen seems to think it's pivotal to the court's decision. This is what he wrote: 

It was clever of Sithambaram [the prosecuting counsel] to use punctuation as a weapon in demolishing the defence’s argument

I have not read the judgment of the Court of Appeal and so I cannot be certain how much importance the appellate court placed on the commas and I don't know if the emphasis Kathirasen places on their significance is just journalistic sensationalism but it should be obvious to anyone who has the smallest acquaintance with basic English words that the absence of commas in this case would have made no difference. 

I will break down the sentence for clarity:

1. A 'director' includes aaa, and includes bbb, and includes ccc.

2. A 'director' includes aaa and includes bbb and includes ccc.

Both sentences 1 and 2 above mean precisely the same thing without an iota of difference. They mean simply that if Najib is just aaa and not bbb or ccc, he is a director. Similarly, if Najib is bbb and not the other two, he is a director. Also, if Najib is aaa and bbb but not ccc, he is still a director. The same if he is all three. The operative word is 'includes' and the commas make absolutely no difference to the reading. 

That's just the plain meaning of the word 'includes'. If you say 'An Indonesian includes a Boyanese, a Javanese and a Sundanese', a person who is only a Javanese will qualify as an Indonesian. He doesn't have to have all 3 ancestries. And it doesn't matter whether a comma is used. It's just the simple meaning of the word 'includes'.  Mind you, even a Sumatran Batak who is not one of these may qualify as an Indonesian because of the width that 'includes' gives to a definition. It has nothing to do with the presence or absence of the comma. 

It's significant to note that while Section 409 of the Singapore Penal Code (which is the equivalent provision in Singapore) has been rewritten to make the matter clearer, the definition of 'director' in Section 4 of the Companies Act in Singapore is substantially the same as that in the Malaysian Penal Code but without even a single comma. Here is the definition of 'director' in Singapore's Companies Act:

It would make nonsense of the lexical meaning of 'includes' to suggest that the elements mentioned above in the definition of a 'director' should be read conjunctively. 

I understand it's very sensational and it makes for good journalism to paint a picture of how the tiny comma demolished the entire defence of Malaysia's former Prime Minister. The idea of the little comma toppling Goliath is very appealing to the journalist's romantic soul. It may be good journalism but it is bad linguistics. And certainly bad law.