Dato’ Param Cumaraswamy, former Malaysian Bar President and former United Nations special rapporteur. Pic from FMT News.
PETALING JAYA: Param Cumaraswamy, former United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said the Malaysian Bar must remain steadfast and united in defence of its independence.
Param, who was named this year’s recipient of the Malaysian Bar Lifetime Achievement Award, said a robust and sound administration of justice was dependent on the co-operation of an independent judiciary, public prosecutor’s office and an independent legal profession.
“When the fundamentals of the independent judiciary and the office of the public prosecutor are tampered with by the executive arm of the government, the legal profession stands alone to alert the public and seek restoration of the fundamentals,” he said in his acceptance speech at the Bar dinner on Saturday.
Param, who was Bar president during the 1988 judicial crisis when six Federal Court judges were tried for misconduct, recalled that at the height of the crisis, former lord president (now renamed chief justice) Mohamed Suffian Hashim had said it would take a generation to restore the judicial independence which the nation then had. Read more
