Restoring faith in judicial system

Amde Sidik

I am no judge nor practicing lawyer at the moment. But I read law and I lecture law to students. And I am prompted to write this article as soon as I finished reading a sms from a friend asking about my views. His statement is this “Its Pak Lah who now reformed judiciary system back to be more dignified”

He was referring to the front page article in our national paper of the day which reads “ Trust and justice” Its about the present government efforts to heal the wound of the country's judicial system which was smeared in the aftermath of the sacking of five Supreme Court judges in 1988.

The fives judges were sacked because they didn't dance to the tune of the chief executive of the country of the day. That was the impression of the majority of learned or less learned people in the country. But only handful would made it known openly to general public by virtue of our cultural habit or because of fear of repercussion from the above

I know many wouldn't agree including the former chief executive I mentioned, after all the later already denied several times that he was not responsible in the sacking the judges.

Could this mean that others recommended to him, in turned, as matter of academic he advised the Agong. We all know constitutionally how Agong must come into the limelight. .

I must say that persons or group of persons making recommendation must be naive and with motives at the back of their mind because as far as I knew any body reads law knows where the defining boundary is. There is an inherent convention in applying natural justice. There is no rocky foundation but rather has an established procedures to achieve justice at least in the crudest sense of the word. I am referring to the process of seeking justice in Common Law scenario.

To date, I have not read any brilliant new ideas which can be more acceptable than what we already knew. In other words, those involved in the Inquiry such as this surely had broken the cardinal rules, they knew of what proper procedures are all about in establishing what fair and just as to why they did as they did. Only they can answer.

My assumption is there are those who needed most of the outcome of Inquiry for wrongly or rightly. The answer is the later which is obvious and must therefore favored of the government of the day?

Legalistically, in my view, to be seen fair and just, it would have been better to leave it to the natural process of the law- as natural as possible. Let it done in accordance with the conventional wisdom not creating a mockery to the highest level for profession which many consider noble. Because of this incident we were nearly called to be just a little less than applying law of the jungle.

This is a portion of long article. I wouldn't like to bore my readers, as this article is to appear in full in printed media-I wrote a few already, after the dismissal of the said judges, they turned out to be a near correct perceptions by majority- Thank you

See response:

Currently, Pak Lah is menggelabah~ing as a result of the tsunami. He seemed to be trying to appease the majority who had abandoned him to make them come back to him. While others are taking this opportunity to undo the past events that had been most unpopular especially during the Mahathir Era. He is running out of time, December seems to be the date for him to retire. As a "good" man he tried to potray himself, he is getting nowhere...Mahathir factor, Anwar factor, Agong Factor, Raja Perlis Factor, Samy Factor, UMNO factor, am No factor, Max Factor (ooops)...all seem to put him against the wall.

Can he do it? Seems a vertical climb. For example, can he appease all the demands of BN components in Sabah when he came here? JPPS, Illegals, petroleum % etc etc.... no way.