What is the most cunning strategy employed by lawyers? None. It is not your cunning that gets you through a case. It is not your brilliance. The Bar is full of brilliant lawyers. Yet they are not all uniformly successful. It is painful, excruciating preparation that gets you through. Here is a true life and death story: it concerned a foreigner. He was found guilty of drug trafficking and was sentenced to death. ...
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There is a client who paid me a king's ransom. This happened many, many years ago. It concerned an elderly ethnic Chinese gentleman and his wife. In the interior of Perak there is a tiny farm. A brook courses through it. On one side of it stood a wooden shack. A family lived there. This Uncle (as we shall call him) was born there. He had an elder brother. After many decades, his ...
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What is the most tedious aspect of being a lawyer? The never-ending paperwork. Answering phone calls all hours of the day; especially if you are into international practice. Doing everything at the last minute because clients won’t give you what you want – that despite you asking them for the documents numerous times, and far ahead of time. Having to take the blame for the errors client’s executives make. Holding clients’ hands in times ...
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[Edited by S. Kamatchy and Suria Juan Pillai] In an article dated 13.07.2018, the ex-Chief Justice, Tun Abdul Hamid says that from 9:30 p.m. on July 11 up to midnight July 31, 2018 there are now two Chief Justices. Is he right? The long and short of all of this is… When the King accepted the resignations of the outgoing CJ and the PCA on 8 June 2018, their offices ceased. The King did ...
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Can Senators be fired? The answer is Yes, and, No. The ‘No’ comes from those who say that the security of tenure of a Senator is unimpeachable. They point to Article 45 (3) of the Federal Constitution, which states that: - ‘… the term of office of a member of the Senate shall be three years and shall not be affected by a dissolution of Parliament.’ A Senator may be appointed twice, making ...
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Someone asked me last week, ‘What did Karpal do for us? What did Lim Kit Siang?’ I blinked. I thought I didn’t hear it right. What did they do? The guy who asked was young. Too young. I attempted an answer and unaccountably slipped into melancholy. I began by saying... These men fought a long-drawn out battle against an implacable enemy—entrenched racism. They fought for the rule of law. They argued that the ...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CX4NkBsvlk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0aJu63DIik Is every vote of equal strength? Does every vote, cast at any part of the nation, possess the same effect? Let’s use the 2018 General Elections (GE-14) as an example. The Kapar parliamentary constituency [P109] represents one seat in parliament. The Putrajaya constituency [P125] also represents one seat. What is the difference? Kapar had, in GE-14, 124,983 voters. Putrajaya had 27,314 voters. So, comparing apple-to-apple, for a single parliamentary seat, Kapar had 4.6 times ...
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The Malaysian Judiciary has languished in darkness for four decades. Have we squandered the golden opportunity to reform it? Are we back to square one? Bringing in new judges won't cut it. Making the courts the more efficient won't help. All that was done: all that did not help. Something else is needed. What should we do to make our Judiciary one of the very ...
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