Fiat Justitia

• 30 January 2018
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Let Justice be done even if the Heavens fall. A landmark truism which any Malaysian who has studied law at the English Bar must be familiar with.

Familiar but unheeded, at least in Malaysia, where unconstitutional judicial appointments, made to ensure political support as well as illegally prolonged fruits of office are forced through by criminal politicians with the, presumably unwilling support of those empowered to make them.

The prolongation of appointment as Federal and Appeal Court judges, while possibly marginally legal, is evidence of unseemly greed on the part of those so favoured and giving rise to doubts about the quid pro quo.

However there can be no doubt that the present appointments of the Chief Justice and the President of the Appeal Court in those posts is unconstitutional and therefore illegal. It follows that all judgments of either Court in which these judges sat are without legal effect and void ab initio.

Quite apart from the light which the matter throws on all involved in these illegal appointments the longer they persist will make the burden of retrial of all the cases on which they sat ever more onerous and unfair to the parties.

Even more bizarre is the decision to leave to the Federal Court the burden of ruling on the constitutionally or otherwise of its present membership. It must be hoped, though not relied on, that the judges personally implicated will not sit on the Bench when the matter is heard.

There is a way out if this legal impasse or, more properly described, imbroglio. The Constitution permits the Agong unilaterally to dissolve Parliament without the need to consult or obtain the agreement of anyone. Since this corrupt Assembly will come to its natural end in August at the latest to dissolve it now is the obvious solution, whether that suits arch criminal Prime Minister Najib or not.

So over to you Yang di Pertuan Agong. You can save your own face and rid your country of a corrupt Assembly and Prime Minister. A new Government will have no difficulty in cleaning up the judicial mess and installing a legally constituted apex Court to carry out its constitutional tasks.