In my Open Letter to Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim last Tuesday to act in the national interest to restore public confidence in the judiciary by withdrawing his controversial application for a six-month extension, I had quoted extensively from former Lord President, Perak Sultan Azlan Shah’s April 2004 postscript to his book “Constitutional Monarchy, Rule of Law and Good Governance” over the “disquiet” at the erosion of public confidence in the judiciary over the previous few years.
I had said that Sultan Azlan Shah’s “critique of the parlous state of the judiciary is even more pertinent today than when he wrote it in April 2004, with the entire period falling under your (Ahmad Fairuz) term as Chief Justice — a powerful reason why Tun should avert a constitutional crisis and a new crisis of confidence over the judiciary over the controversial application for a six-month extension.”
This has been confirmed by Sultan Azlan Shah In his opening speech at the 14th Malaysia Law Conference yesterday, as he said:
Sadly I must acknowledge there has been some disquiet about our judiciary over the past few years and in the more recent past. In 2004, I had stated that it grieved me, having been a member of the judiciary, whenever I heard allegations against the judiciary and the erosion of public confidence in the judiciary.
Recently there have been even more disturbing events relating to the judiciary reported in the press. We have also witnessed the unprecedented act of a former Court of Appeal judge writing in his post-retirement book of erroneous and questionable judgements delivered by our higher courts in a chapter under the heading “When Justice is Not Administered According to Law”. There are other serious criticisms.
I am driven nostalgically to look back to a time when our Judiciary was the pride of the region, and our neighbours spoke admiringly of our legal system. We were then second to none and the judgements of our courts were quoted confidently in other common law jurisdictions. As Tun Suffian, a former Lord President of the then Federal Court, said of the local judges who took over from the expatriate judges after Merdeka that the transformation was without “any reduction in standards”.
Admittedly society is more complex today and the task of judges may be more difficult then what it was before, but the values I speak of are universal and eternal.
There is no reason why judges with the assured security of tenure they enjoy under the Constitution should not discharge their duties impartially, confidently and competently.
Will the de facto Law Minister, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz dismiss Sultan Azlan Shah’s increasing “disquiet” about the crisis of confidence in the judiciary as a “false” perception and baseless allegation of one person, in the way he dismissed the concern of Malaysian Bar on the ground that it is no “big deal” as only 1,000 out of 13,000 lawyers or 26 million Malaysians had taken part in the “Walk for Justice” to the Prime Minister’s Office in Putrajaya?