Chapter 4 of What the Judiciary Was and What It Has Become 

[A record of the Malaysian Judiciary, before 1988 to now]

The letter that brought down the Malaysian judiciary asked for nothing.

It made no demand. It threatened nobody. It sought no remedy from any court. It expressed disappointment, and it expressed a hope.

It was also not the Lord President’s idea.

The meeting nobody talks about

Chapter 3 ended on 18 March 1988, with the Prime Minister telling Parliament that judges were bending over backwards to rule against his Government.

Seven days later the judges met.

The meeting was held on 25 March 1988. It brought together the judges of the Supreme Court — then Malaysia’s highest court — and the High Court judges resident in Kuala Lumpur. Accounts commonly put the number at about twenty.¹Panel of Eminent Persons, Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons to Review the 1988 Judicial Crisis in Malaysia (Malaysian Bar Council, International Bar Association, LAWASIA and Transparency International–Malaysia, 26 July 2008) (‘PEP Report’) para 2.28. The Report describes the composition but does not give a figure; the figure of twenty is drawn from secondary accounts and is given as reported.

Here is the detail that gets left out of every retelling.

The 2008 Panel records that Tun Salleh Abas called the meeting “pursuant to the lead taken by Abdul Razak J.”²PEP Report (n 1) para 2.28.

A puisne judge — an ordinary judge of the High Court, not a head of court — had moved first. The Lord President followed.

They discussed what the Report calls “the repeated attacks on the judiciary by the Prime Minister.” They asked what might be done to preserve the judiciary’s independence.

They could have answered in public. They could have answered from the bench. They did neither.

The consensus was to write privately to the King.

Who was in the room

Read the attendance carefully. It is the whole chapter.

Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Omar was there. He was then Chief Justice of Malaya — not the head of the judiciary, but the head of the High Court in Peninsular Malaysia. Five months later he would chair the tribunal that removed Tun Salleh Abas for sending the letter this meeting decided to send.

He did not dissent. The Panel is specific: “Neither Tan Sri Dato’ Abdul Hamid Omar nor any other attendee at the meeting expressed a dissenting view.”³ibid.

A drafting committee was appointed to help. It was Tan Sri Mohamed Azmi, Tan Sri Wan Hamzah and Abdul Razak J. Azmi and Wan Hamzah would both be suspended in July and put before a tribunal of their own.⁴ibid; and PEP Report (n 1) para 2.70.

One judge alone counselled caution. That was Tan Sri Hashim Yeop A Sani. He did not oppose the decision. He would be appointed in August to chair the second tribunal, which tried five of the judges who had sat with him that day.⁵PEP Report (n 1) paras 2.28 and 2.76.

And one senior judge was not present at all. Tan Sri Lee Hun Hoe, Chief Justice (Borneo), did not attend. He became a member of the tribunal that removed the Lord President.⁶PEP Report (n 1) paras 2.28 and 2.46.

Two of the judges who later sat in judgment on the letter had a history with it. One had agreed to it in the room, and said nothing against it. The other had simply been elsewhere.

What the letter said

The letter went out the next day, 26 March 1988. It was written in Bahasa Malaysia. It was sent to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong — the King, and Head of State — and to the Rulers of the States.⁷PEP Report (n 1) para 2.29. The English translation appears as Annexure 2 at page 112 of the Notes of Proceedings of the First Tribunal. This series has not seen the original and quotes the translation as commonly reproduced.

The commonly reproduced translation runs, in its central passage:

“All of us are disappointed with the various comments and accusations made by the Honourable Prime Minister against the Judiciary, not only outside but within the Parliament.”

And it expressed the hope that all those unfounded accusations would be stopped.⁸The wording is that of the English translation as reproduced in standard secondary accounts, including the Wikipedia entry on Salleh Abas accessed 8 August 2026. The authoritative text is the Tribunal annexure at (n 6).

That is the whole of it. Disappointment, and a hope.

It asked for no inquiry. It named no case. It sought no punishment of anybody, and no protection for anybody. It went to the King privately, and to the Rulers privately, and not to a newspaper.

This letter became charge number four.⁹PEP Report (n 1) para 2.29.

Two days later he left the country

On 28 March 1988 Tun Salleh flew out.

The trip was long: medical treatment abroad, and a short pilgrimage to Mecca. He came home on 17 May.¹⁰PEP Report (n 1) para 2.30.

So for seven weeks the Lord President of Malaysia was out of the country and out of the argument.

On 1 May the Prime Minister had an audience with the King. In a letter written four days later, he indicated that at that meeting the King had commanded him to take action against the Lord President.¹¹PEP Report (n 1) para 2.31, referring to the Prime Minister’s letter of 5 May 1988, at page 113 of the report of the First Tribunal.

A word here, because it matters and because it is often muddled.

Under the Federal Constitution the King acts on advice. That is, he acts on what the Government tells him to do, except in the few matters where the Constitution gives him a personal discretion. Removing a judge is not one of them. The machinery under Article 125 starts with the Prime Minister, and it starts nowhere else.

Whatever passed between the two men on 1 May, the document that set the removal in motion came from the Prime Minister. It was written three weeks later.

Six days after he came home

Tun Salleh returned on 17 May.

On 23 May he did his job. He fixed the UMNO appeal — the appeal described in Chapter 2 — for hearing on 13 June, before nine judges. On the same day he directed that the Government’s appeal in Karpal Singh’s habeas corpus case be heard on 15 June.¹²PEP Report (n 1) paras 2.32–2.33.

Two appeals the Government very much wanted to win, both listed within a month, one of them before every available judge in the country.

Two days later, on 25 May, the Prime Minister wrote to the King.

The letter gave a ground and a conclusion. Tun Salleh’s behaviour, it said, and “other causes which clearly show that he is no longer able to discharge his functions as Lord President properly.” He ought therefore to be removed from office.¹³PEP Report (n 1) para 2.34, quoting the Prime Minister’s letter of 25 May 1988, Annexure 4 at page 114 of the report of the First Tribunal.

An annexure listed the grounds. There were four.

The speech of 1 August 1987. The speech of 12 January 1988. The adjournment of a case called Teoh Eng Huat v Kadhi Pasir Mas, about a minor’s choice of religion. And the letter of 26 March 1988.¹⁴ibid.

The letter then advised the King to suspend the Lord President. The power came from Article 125(5) of the Constitution. It allows a judge to be put out of office temporarily, on pay, while an inquiry proceeds.

The suspension was to take effect the very next day. A tribunal would be appointed under Article 125(3).

The King replied the same day, agreeing.¹⁵PEP Report (n 1) para 2.35, referring to the letter of 25 May 1988 at Annexure 5, page 115 of the report of the First Tribunal.

The 2008 Panel, reviewing that sequence twenty years on, used a phrase lawyers do not use casually. The suspension coming immediately after the direction of 23 May was, it said, “strong evidence of mala fides” — bad faith.¹⁶PEP Report (n 1) para 2.35.

Two days from the listing of the UMNO appeal to the letter recommending removal. Three days to the suspension.

27 May

On 27 May Tun Salleh was called to meet the Prime Minister. He was told of the King’s displeasure at his letter, of his suspension, and of the tribunal. At 11.45 that morning the formal notice of suspension reached him.¹⁷PEP Report (n 1) para 2.36.

On the same day the acting Lord President, Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Omar, cancelled the empanelment of the UMNO and Karpal Singh appeals and vacated both hearing dates.¹⁸PEP Report (n 1) para 2.37.

The nine-judge bench never sat. Chapter 2 recorded where that appeal ended up, and who decided it.

Two days later Tun Salleh wrote to the Prime Minister setting out what he had been told at that meeting. There were two objectionable acts, he wrote. His letter to the King and the Rulers. And partiality in the UMNO case.¹⁹PEP Report (n 1) para 2.39, referring to Tun Salleh’s letter of 29 May 1988, Annexure 8 at pages 118–119 of the report of the First Tribunal.

The Chief Secretary to the Government had been in the room. Called as a witness before the tribunal, he was asked whether the UMNO case was mentioned. Twice he said he could not recall.²⁰PEP Report (n 1) para 2.41, citing pages 191–192 of the report of the First Tribunal.

Now hold the two things side by side.

Of the two acts the Prime Minister named to his face, one became charge four. The other never appeared on any charge sheet at all.

The Panel explains why in seven words: “for obvious reasons no charge was brought.”²¹ibid.

To charge a judge with partiality in the UMNO case, somebody would have had to prove it. And the only act complained of was his direction that every available judge in Malaysia should hear it.

Next: Chapter 5 — Tribunal One.

Further reading. The Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons to Review the 1988 Judicial Crisis in Malaysia (2008) is published in full, free, by the Malaysian Bar.

 

 

∞§∞

This article is written for a general readership and does not constitute technical or legal advice. Readers with legal questions are encouraged to seek independent legal advice.

The author thanks KN Geetha, TP Vaani, JN Lheela, and Lydia Jaynthi at GK Legal. Our gratitude to Fethi Benattallah of Unsplash for the image.

Claude, Anthropic’s AI, smoothed the drafting; Perplexity Pro checked the facts. The argument, the views, and the errors remain the author’s.

@Copyright reserved.

All content on this site, including but not limited to text, compilation, graphics, documents, and layouts, is the intellectual property of GK Ganesan Kasinathan and is protected by local and international copyright laws. Any use shall be invalid unless written permission is obtained by writing to gk@gkganesan.com.”