92% Parliament majority turns ugly...

The 92% majority-controlled Parliament turned ugly when I was not prepared to play ball and cut short my speech on the prerequisites for a truly independent judiciary during the debate on the Constitution Amendment Bill (No. 2) this evening.

Shouting, yelling and booing, Barisan Nasional backbenchers made such a din to try to drown me out that I told the House that I was reminded of the observation by the DAP MP for Bukit Gelugor Karpal Singh in such circumstances in the past, that the House appeared to have descended into a “zoo”.

The observation did not pacify but aggravated the bedlam in the House.

The background noises created by the Barisan Nasional backbenchers were so provocative that I extended invitations to Barisan Nasional MPs to “get out” of the House if they did not like what I had to say, resulting in several, including one Minister, making an ostentatious display of a parliamentary “walk-out”! All the time, the Deputy Speaker was demanding that I wind up my rather short speech.

The near-pandemonium dominated the second topic of my speech on an independent judiciary after I had touched on the Rafidah imbroglio, which I will blog separately.

The Bill makes amendments to Part IX on “The Judiciary” - Articles 121, 124 and 125 - of the Federal Constitution, viz:

Article 121 – to enable the Yang di Pertuan Agong to determine the places for the principal registry of the High Court in Malaya, the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court instead of being fixed in Kuala Lumpur at present;

Article124 – to provide for separate and specific provisions with regard to the procedure on the taking of an oath for a newly appointed President of the Court of Appeal and a judge of the Court of Appeal;

Article 125 – to allow the Chief Justice to refer a judge who commits a breach of the judges’ code of ethics to a body constituted under federal law – short of referring judges to the Judicial Tribunal for removal for grave misconduct.

In my speech on the judiciary, I made the following points:

1. The amendment to Article 121, which is given retrospective effect, is clearly to legalise the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya after its transfer from Kuala Lumpur in 2003, raising the question of the legality of the Palace of Justice in the past three years, i.e. whether the Palace of Justice was a Palace of Illegality from 2003 - 2005.

Although Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, the Minister in the PM’s Department tabling the bill, replied in his winding-up that the effect of the amendment only affected the registries of the High Court, Court of Appeal and Federal Court but not the cases and therefore purely administrative in effect, I demurred and argued that it could affect the legality of cases which were filed at the Palace of Justice before the present constitutional amendment comes unto force – hence the need for the repugnant and obnoxious resort to retrospective legislation.

2. Revision of the 1994 Judges’ Code of Ethics should be a transparent and consultative process, involving not only judges, but also MPs, lawyers and the civil society. This is particularly important because of the failure of the original Code of Ethics for Judges to raise the ethical tone of the judiciary and to inspire public confidence in its impartiality, independence and integrity.

3. I asked who is to refer the Chief Justice for investigation for any breach of the Judges’ Code of Conduct. I stressed that this is not an academic or hypothetical question but a a very pertinent one, as the author of the original Judges’ Code of Ethics 1994, the then Chief Justice Eusuff Chin, was later guilty of gross breach of the Code and there was no remedy open to the aggrieved.

4. Endorsement and call for government support of Suhakam (Human Rights Commission) recommendation for the establishment of an independent judicial commission with the following terms of reference:

a. Ensure a competent, independent and impartial Judiciary.

b. Increase the transparency and accountability of judicial appointments.

c. Ensure that only competent individuals are appointed to the Bench; and

d. Increase public confidence in the Judiciary as the authority and integrity of the Judiciary is of the utmost importance in a democratic society.

I pointed out that practices in other countries and the proposal of the Bar Council of Malaysia for a more transparent and accountable judicial appointment process are in line with the global progressive trend towards a more transparent, accountable and comprehensible system of governance.

However, these concepts and considerations were mere Greek to the Barisan Nasional MPs who were just impatient to end the debate, vote on the Constitution Amendment Bill and call it a day.