DAP welcomes developments indicating that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is finally prepared to carry out long-overdue reforms to take the first step to restore national and international confidence in the independence, impartiality, integrity and quality of the judiciary.
I have been calling for judicial reforms both in and outside Parliament in the past two decades when the country reeled from one judiciary crisis to another since the “Mother of Judicial Crisis” in 1988 with the arbitrary sacking of Tun Salleh Abas as Lord President and two Supreme Court Judges, the late Tan Sri Wan Suleiman Pawanteh and Datuk George Seah as Supreme Court judges, and the victimization of independent-minded judges.
Abdullah should not take half-hearted measures but must initiate far-reaching judicial reforms to restore the Malaysian judiciary to its world-class pedestal which it had enjoyed since Independence in 1957 until two decades ago.
To ensure that Malaysia move out of the “judicial darkness” in the past two decades, the elements of a far-reaching judicial reform programme must include:
• A Royal Commission of Inquiry on Judicial Reforms to make detailed recommendations after a probe into the “judicial darkness” of the past two decades;
• A just and proper closure to the 1988 judicial crisis over the sacking of Tun Salleh Abas as Lord President and Datuk George Seah and the late Tan Sri Wan Sulaiman Pawanteh as Supreme Court judges, bearing in mind that the victims of the “Mother of Judicial Crisis in Malaysia” were not confined to the three top judges sacked, the three other judges who were persecuted and hauled before a Judicial Tribunal but also the Malaysian people and nation who suffered for two decades the depredations of a deepening “judicial darkness”;
• Restoration of the doctrine of the separation of powers by reinstating the inherent judicial powers of the judiciary as entrenched in the Merdeka Constitution but which was taken away in a constitutional amendment in 1988 as part of the 1987-88 Operation Lalang crackdown on fundamental liberties.
• A Judicial Appointment and Promotions Commission; and
• Overhaul of the Judges’ Code of Ethics to restore public confidence in judicial independence, impartiality and integrity, and to provide for a satisfactory and accountable mechanism for public complaints against judges, including the Chief Justice, for breaches of the Judges’ Code of Ethics.