Day: October 20, 2007

(Transcript of Chief Justice, Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim media interview on August 21, 2007 after opening the seminar on the thoughts and academic works of the late Tan Sri Ahmad Ibrahim where he advocated the abolition of Common Law and denied that a Federal Court judge had over 30 unwritten grounds of judgement from High Court days)

Q. Judges having outstanding grounds of decision. What steps have you taken so far in this matter…

Ahmad Fairuz (A.F.) – Well I had checked and I find that the news that say that a judge of the Federal Court has got 30 grounds of decision not written, that’s definitely not according to our record. Our record, we do not have such thing. No Federal Court judge has got such big arrears of grounds of decision to write. We don’t have that in our record. It is something wrong there…

… preliminary investigations showed that that particular judge has read his grounds of decision in open court in the year 2002. He had read but I don’t know what happened after that. We got to check. The grounds of decision had been read, yes, the written grounds, he had already written his grounds of decision, he had read it in open court in 2002, so I am still checking on it lah…

We have not completed our investigations. The preliminary investigations showed that the judge had read his grounds of judgment in the year 2002. So the report is not that right. We have got to check first. I think, you know, it is very dangerous when we said something which is not the truth. In Islam it’s called fitnah. It is very bad. You don’t say anything which is not the truth. You check first then you say it.

So now I am investigating. I found that the judge had read his grounds of decision already in 2002. There must be something wrong somewhere. So we are investigating into it now.

Q. What about other judges? Are you looking into overall… …

A.F. – Overall. Overall. We have got records. We have got records with us as to the judges who have not written grounds of decision. In fact, in the past, judges who have not written grounds of decision have not been promoted until they finished their grounds of decision only then they are being promoted. Right? Continue reading “Fairuz Tape transcript – abolish Common Law”

I am calling this media conference to prove that the Chief Justice, Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim had misled Parliament in his denial that he had advocated the abolition of the Common Law at the seminar on the thoughts and academic works of the late Tan Sri Ahmad Ibrahim two months ago on August 21, which made the front-page headline, “Mansuh Common Law — Ketua Hakim Negara mahu perundangan lapuk Inggeris diganti”, in the Utusan Malaysia the next day.

On 5th September 2007, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz replied in Parliament to my earlier speech criticizing Ahmad Fairuz’ call for the abolition of the common law system as being most unbecoming of the highest judicial officer of the land sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution and the Merdeka social contract.
Nazri gave a flat denial that Ahmad Fairuz had ever made such a call for the abolition of the common law system saying that the Chief Justice’s speech made no such mention whatsoever.

Nazri blamed reporters and their poor quality reporting for the mistake. However, when I asked why no correction had been made by Ahmad Fairuz for close to two weeks of the public controversy over his call, Nazri said Parliament was the best forum for the explanation.

Nazri also made the following claim:

“Hari pertama perkara ini keluar, Ketua Hakim telah menghubungi saya untuk menyatakan bahawa itu merupakan satu perkara tidak benar yang dituliskan dalam akhbar. Saya tidak menyalahi beliau kerana dengan izin I have got bad experience juga dengan surat khabar. Apa juga yang kita nafikan yang dilaporkan mereka, tidak mendapat tempat yang sama seperti mana mereka telah melaporkan sehari sebelum itu sebab credibilitynya. Saya rasa, pada saya, it is a waste of time.”

It is significant that up to now, Ahmad Fairuz had neither refuted nor confirmed Nazri’s denial on his behalf that he had ever called for the abolition of the common law although the Chief Justice should know that his call had set off a public controversy in legal circles and the public domain which is still raging on.

Did Ahmad Fairuz call for the abolition of the common law in Malaysia 50 years after independence?

I have here a tape recording of Ahmad Fairuz media interview after his opening speech at the seminar on the thoughts and academic works of the late Tan Sri Ahmad Ibrahim on August 21, which clearly confirmed his call for the abolition of the Common Law, viz:

“My own opinion I think there is no need for us to go to the Common Law of England now. We have a lot of our pakar undang-undang sekarang ini yang boleh memberi pendapat masing-masing mengenai undang-undang bagaimana cara nak solve undang-undang. Why should we go to Common Law?”

Earlier, Ahmad Fairuz told the press about his proposal at the seminar:

“I am just suggesting to the seminar, perhaps they can look into this matter, whether you want to still maintain and keep this position ataupun you show to the government that we can put another substitute to this method, why go to Common Law? And pulak tu tahun 1957?”

Ahmad Fairuz is not fit to continue for a single day as Chief Justice. If he could use Nazri to mislead Parliament to deny on his behalf that he had advocated the abolition of Common Law in August, when he had actually done so as proven by this Fairuz Tape, he could easily mislead Nazri a second time to issue the denial that he was the other party in the Lingam Tape. Continue reading “Ahmad Fairuz is not fit to continue for a single day as Chief Justice”

What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey
From The Economist
Oct 18th 2007

THE British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once. “The funding of schools, the governance of schools, curriculum standards, assessment and testing, the role of local government, the role of national government, the range and nature of national agencies, schools admissions”–you name it, it’s been changed and sometimes changed back. The only thing that hasn’t changed has been the outcome. According to the National Foundation for Education Research, there had been (until recently) no measurable improvement in the standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools for 50 years.

England and Wales are not alone. Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing. No matter what you do, it seems, standards refuse to budge (see chart). To misquote Woody Allen, those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach, run the schools.

Why bother, you might wonder. Nothing seems to matter. Yet something must. There are big variations in educational standards between countries. These have been measured and re-measured by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which has established, first, that the best performing countries do much better than the worst and, second, that the same countries head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea.

Those findings raise what ought to be a fruitful question: what do the successful lot have in common? Yet the answer to that has proved surprisingly elusive. Not more money. Singapore spends less per student than most. Nor more study time. Finnish students begin school later, and study fewer hours, than in other rich countries. Continue reading “Education – How to be top”