CJ welcomes proposal to set up judicial commission to appoint judges

PUTRAJAYA, WED:

Chief Justice Datuk Abdul Hamid Mohamad said today he welcomed the proposal to set up a commission to appoint judges and other senior judicial officers if it would help regain the confidence of the public in the Judiciary, and the Executive in relation to the Judiciary.

“I have been asked many times for my view on the suggestion. Let me say it here. I take the stand that it is a policy decision for the Executive to make.



“If the Executive, in its wisdom, believes that it will help in identifying the right candidate, if it will help to redeem the negative perception of the Judiciary, if it will help to redeem the negative perception towards the Executive in the appointment of judges, if it will help to regain the confidence of the public in the Judiciary and the Executive in relation to the Judiciary, why not?” he said when opening the three-day Judges Conference 2008, here.



Abdul Hamid said the Executive and the Judiciary must ensure that the right people were appointed to the commission or committee that would be given the task to appoint the judges and other senior judicial officers of the Judiciary.



“They themselves must be people of integrity, knowledgeable, incorruptible, fair and without any vested interest. They should not have an agenda of their own. Neither should they be the conduit for lobbying for the judgeship,” he said.


On the 1988 judicial crisis, Abdul Hamid, who had refrained from responding to the proposal by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Zaid Ibrahim that the Government should issue an apology to former Lord President Tun Salleh Abas and two other former Federal Court judges who were sacked, finally made known his stand today.



He said it was a policy decision for the Executive to make and that if the Executive, in its wisdom, believed that it was a proper thing to do, he would welcome the move.



“After all, in that episode, the Judiciary was on the receiving end,” he said.



Salleh, who had ascended to the position of Lord President in 1984 and had presided over several high profile cases, was dismissed for alleged misconduct following a tribunal hearing in August 1988. Two Supreme Court judges who had earlier granted him an injunction order against the tribunal were also dismissed.



Abdul Hamid, in his speech, also commented on the practice of some judges who did not write their judgments themselves but asked their respective research officers to draft the judgments, which he regarded as a misconduct and one which might encourage corruption.


The chief justice said the Malaysian judiciary should not adopt the system practised by the judiciary in the United States where the clerk of a judge drafted the judge’s judgment.



“Judgments are something that every judge should be proud of. They are something very personal. They reflect our knowledge, our intellectual honesty, our analytical power, our ability to grasp the issues, our ability to think straight or otherwise, our ability to express ourselves clearly or whether we ourselves are confused, our command of the language, our style of writing, indeed our whole character,” he said.



“I do not understand why any judge would not want to be proud enough to produce his or her own literary masterpieces,” Abdul Hamid said, adding that if it was the research officer who drafted the judgement, then how could he (the research officer) make the judge’s observation of the witnesses’ demeanor.



He said that when a judgment was written for a judge, there was a great temptation for the judges to merely place their signature to reduce the statistics of unwritten judgments and might even encourage corruption on the part of the oficers who drafted the judgments.



Abdul Hamid said the quality of work that would come out from a research officer who drafted the judgment would be that of a junior officer.



“I think it is a dereliction of duty for a judge to ask someone, including his or her research officer, to draft his or her judgment, and it is a misconduct to get someone, including his or her research officer, to write it for him or her.



“A judge who writes a judgment for another judge, a judge whose judgment is written by another judge and a judge who allows himself to be influenced by another person in arriving at his decision, commits a misconduct,” he said.



About 90 judges from the High Court, Court of Appeal and Federal Court are attending the conference.



The Regent of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, also addressed the conference. His speech can be read here.



A four-cornered forum, comprising the Judiciary, the Attorney-General, the Police and the Anti-Corruption Agency, would also be held to enable the four agencies to interact with each other in order to find solutions to the common problems in the administration of criminal justice

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