Press Statement
No interference with the judiciary in new disclosure made by the former Chief Judge of Sabah & S’wak
28 July 2025
- The former Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak has now claimed that a “very senior member of the judiciary” had “interfered” in a case by sending him an email telling him “how wrong his interpretation of the constitutional issue was”, in relation to a case he was deciding. Ex-AG Apandi Ali and Umno politician Puad Zarkashi have also made public statements that this is interference with the judiciary.
- The suggestion of judicial “interference” is plainly wrong, and quite incomprehensible. This is because, the “very senior” judge who’s being accused of interference, was also one of the 7 members of the panel of judges who decided that case. How can a judge “interfere” in a case in which she herself was involved in deciding? Such a suggestion defies logic.
- It only amounts to interference with a judicial decision, when any person who is not a member of the court deciding a matter, such as the Executive, tries to influence those judges to decide in a particular way. That is obviously not the case here.
- I do not believe that such a puzzling allegation has ever been made before in Commonwealth judicial history.
- It is part of the judicial process for multi-judge appellate courts to discuss the reasoning or decision of a case among themselves, in the process of arriving at or writing the judgment of the case. During deliberations, they can and must communicate with each other. There’s nothing sinister about that.
- Whenever there’s disagreement on the outcome of a case among the judges, it’s usual for them to circulate their draft majority or minority opinion to their fellow judges in the hope of persuading some of their colleagues to change their minds. In other words, there can be nothing wrong with any judge suggesting to his fellow judge in the same panel that his interpretation of the law is incorrect, and to try to change his position on it.
- This is part of the usual process of judicial decision-making, not just in Malaysia, but also of Supreme Courts in other common-law countries such as UK or the US.
- It is also strange that a judge of the highest court in the land, who has security of tenure and constitutional protection, is making a complaint that he was affected by “peer pressure”. A judge of the federal court is not a vulnerable person who ought to be affected by “peer pressure”.
- Judicial interference is a very serious matter that must be vigilantly guarded against. However, it must never be trivialised, or confused with the entirely appropriate and necessary internal process of discussion and deliberation among judges.
Issued by
N Surendran
Advisor
Lawyers for Liberty