We are in for some very interesting legal arguments. We now have a retired Court of Appeal judge questioning our Federal Court's recent judgments relating to the Perak power grab.
It appears we cannot accept our court decisions at face value. We are now better informed and the information, thanks to the internet, is almost as instantaneous as we can get.
This is a perverse judgement of the Federal Court. It is perverse because it is a decision that was made in blatant defiance of Article 72 (1) of the Federal Constitution which says,”The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”. The judges of the Federal Court have failed the people and the government of this country when they chose to ignore the law of the Constitution of Malaysia. In other words the judges have refused to do justice according to law.
Incidentally, ultra vires does not mean “outside the law”. It means “outside one’s jurisdiction, beyond the scope of one s power or authority”. And we may ask, who is the Federal Court to say what is beyond the jurisdiction of the Speaker when the supreme law of the country says that “the validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”.
Don’t these judges realize that they have actually done a disservice to the Government of the day? Perhaps they have never heard of the Taff Vale case.
I think the message of the Taff Vale case to our judges of the Federal Court should be clear enough. The electorate may decide, just as the voters did in 1906 England to the Conservative Government, to use the power of their vote to unseat the BN government in the next by-election or general election because they do not trust the judges. Poor Najib our new Prime Minister, it is the judges who have let him down. Unfortunately it would be the Prime Minister who has to carry the baby, but not the irresponsible judges who did all the damage by not administering justice according to law.
Suppose the Speaker Sivakumar were to ignore the declarative decree of the Federal Court, what then? Clause (2) of Article 72 of the Federal Constitution says that “No person shall be liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him when taking part in proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of any State or of any committee thereof”. The Federal Court can say anything they like but the Speaker is not liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him when taking part in proceedings of the Legislative Assembly. The order of the Federal Court seems to me to be a brutum fulmen which in Latin means “ineffectual thunderbolt; (action which is) loud but ineffective”. It reminds me of the words of Horace: Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus which in Latin means “Mountains will be in labour, the birth will be a single laughable mouse”.
The errant judges of the Federal Court should heed the warning of the late Lord Denning, What Next in the Law, Butterworths, London, 1982, p 330:
May not the judges themselves sometimes abuse or misuse their power? It is their duty to administer and apply the law of the land. If they should divert it or depart from it a - and do so knowingly - they themselves would be guilty of a misuse of power.
And he posed this question:
Suppose a future Prime Minister should seek to pack the Bench with judges of his own extreme political colour. Would they be tools in his hand?
The full article:
Lim Kit Siang: When the highest court in the land could bring down the Government of the day
by N H Chan
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