The Malaysian Insight

IF you are an employer, would you extend the retirement age of senior executives who have not been stellar performers?

If you wanted to transform your company and change the whole culture, would you trust this important reform job to individuals who are part of the old system?

If the answer to both these questions is NO, ‎then why should the Dr Mahathir government give a proposal to extend the retirement age of Chief Justice Richard Malanjum and other senior judges from 66 to 70 any consideration?

A government bent on undoing the sins of the past can only do so by removing every last vestige of that past. Half measures and misplaced magnanimity will not help remake Malaysia.

To be sure, several individuals in the new government including de facto Law Minister Liew Vui Keong have been pushing for the retirement of the judges to be extended, arguing that these extra years will give these judges more time to carry out reforms, etc.

Promoters of this plan note that the country’s top four judges will leave office within the next few months or a year and there would be a gap in experience and continuity on the bench.

The Malaysian Insight understands that lawyers’ associations of Sabah and Sarawak are also keen to see Messrs Malanjum and Co get four more years. It is unclear what is the position of the Malaysian Bar on Parliament amending the constitution to extend the retirement age of judges.

However, what is clear is that the Bar Council, senior leaders such as Lim Kit Siang, Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Guan Eng, Mohamad Sabu, legal experts and countless litigants have for years ‎complained about a judiciary mired in the dark arts.

There have been allegations of corruption and unholy alliances between several lawyers and some judges; there has been reports of interference by senior judges in important cases and ‎the belief that the Palace of Justice does not always deliver justice without fear or favour as it should.

These are not new allegations but have stuck to the institution like a bad rash through the years. A Royal Commission of Inquiry in 2007 heard how V. K. Lingam brokered judicial appointments with former chief justice Ahmad Fairuz.

The commission made a host of recommendations to clean up the judiciary, the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi administration pledged to take criminal action against wrongdoers but precious little happened.

In August last year, Court of Appeal judge Justice Hamed Sultan Abu Backer revealed how he was reprimanded by a top judge for giving a dissenting judgment in the M. Indira Gandhi unilateral conversion case.

In the case, the Court of Appeal in a 2-1 decision, ruled that the civil court had no jurisdiction over the conversion of Indira’s children to Islam, saying the matter was the purview of the Shariah courts.

Justice Hamid Sultan disagreed with the majority view, saying that the conversion could be questioned by a civil court.

After being ticked off by the top judge for his dissenting judgment, Hamid Sultan said that he was not assigned cases related to the federal constitution and public interest matters.

The best answer the court has given to this serious allegation is that the “top judge” in the incident had retired.

This stock answer is as dangerous as the narrative floating around that Malaysia’s judiciary is on the mend following the ‎resignation of former chief justice Raus Sharif and Court of Appeal president Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin on July 31.

Raus and Zulkefli had their terms extended controversially by the Najib administration, despite the weight of legal opinion showing that this extension was constitutionally flawed.

This episode was another low point of the Malaysian judiciary. Imagine judges not following the rule of law and the sanctity of the Constitution they were sworn to protect.

But let’s be clear, Raus and Zulkefli were not the only ones tarred in this controversy.

There where a whole host of individuals who allowed the constitution to be violated by their actions or reluctance to stand up for what was right. Included in this ‎list of shame was the former prime minister Najib Razak, his cabinet ministers and government officials.

They were allowed to get away with this violation with either the support or the omission to act by some judges. ‎This was one episode when the reform credentials of the men and women who sit in the Palace of Justice could have been burnished.

Sadly, many were found wanting.

And now there is a campaign to extend their retirement age from 66 to 70 so that they can suddenly become beacons of the reform of the judiciary?

Malaysians voted out Umno and Barisan Nasional because they believed that only clean break from the past would clear the path for change and reform in Malaysia.

In a similar vein, if the judiciary is to be saved and rehabilitated, there must be a clean break from the past. Extending the retirement age of judges who have been part of the system for decades cannot be part of the Dr Mahathir administration’s reform agenda. – January 19, 2019.