The Chief Justice of the Federal Court, Tan Sri Mohd Eusoff Chin, yesterday made various proposals about legal reforms, such as:
Eusoff Chin revealed that a sub-commtitee, headed by Federal Court judge Tan Sri Edgar Joseph Jr. and comprise Appeal Court judge Justice Datuk G. Sri Ram, High Court judges Justices Datuk Wira Mohd Noor Ahmad and Datuk Low Hop Bing and Judicial Commissioner Datuk R. K. Nathan had been set up two months ago and had already referred its first batch of recommendations to the Rules Committee.
There is an urgent need for legal reforms to ensure that justice is dispensed by our legal and judicial system, and that injustice is not perpetrated either because of inordinate delays or lack of impartiality and integrity by judges or by the misdemeanours or unethical practices by lawyers.
What must be disturbing to the Malaysian public is the failure of the Bench and Bar to work as a team to ensure the dispensation of justice in our courts, as could be seen by the composition of the Sub-Committee to the Rules Committee, as mentioned by Eusoff Chin - which comprises only judges and no representative from the Bar Council.
The Bench and Bar should set up a joint committee to reach a consensus on legal reforms to our judicial and legal system in the interests of justice instead of talking to each other through the mass media.
Apart from the perspectives of the Bench and Bar on desirable legal reforms, the interests of the public must be taken into full consideration. For example, although the proposal to introduce hearing fees is aimed to prevent lawyers from prolonging a case, how could the change ensure that the litigant is not the final loser - whether in terms of a hurried disposal of his case or having to pay the new hearing fees in the event of the prolongation of the case?
The breakdown of dialogue and lines of communication between the Bar and the Bench is unhealthy and detrimental to both an independent and upright Bench and an independent and responsible Bar.
This sad state of affairs of a breakdown of dialogue and lines of communications also applies in the relationship between the Bar and the Attorney-General, who seemed to be talking to each other only through the press.
Thus, on 19th July 1996, the Attorney-General, Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah, literally dropped a “bombshell” in his speech to the Medico-Legal Society of Malaysia Annual Dinner in Kuala Lumpur when he spoke about the need for “surgeries, implantations and transplantations” to amend the Legal Profession Act (LPA) so as to dilute the membership of the Bar Council by including government lawyers and law lecturers and announced that his Chambers was working on amendments to the LPA.
The breakdown of dialolgue and lines of communication between the Bar and Bench on the one hand and the Bar and the Attorney-General’s Chambers is a far cry from the position in the early days of Merdeka.
The Legal Profession Act 1976 was in fact drafted by the Bar Council on the proposal of the first Attorney-General in Malaysia, Tan Sri Kadir Yusof. Is it conceivable that the present Attorney-General would invite the Bar Council to draft amendments to the LPA to update the law with the change of times?
Alas, what we have is the Attorney-General unilaterally wanting to amend the Legal Profession Act without first consulting with the Bar Council.
The fences between the Bar and Bench as well as the Bar and the Attorney-General’s Chambers had broken down for too long in the public good, and all parties concerned should mend these fences in the common interest of upholding the highest goals of our judicial system - to sustain an independent and upright Judiciary as well as an independent and responsible Bar.
(2/11/96)