THE hearings of four native customary rights (NCR) land suits at the Court of Appeal sitting in Kuching last week were delayed as those sitting on the bench did not have Borneo judicial experience.

The bench comprises justices Zabariah Mohd Yusof, Suraya Othman and Kamaludin Md Said. 

The decision to defer the cases surprised lawyer Dominique Ng, one of Sarawak’s leading NCR land lawyers.

“In the past, they gave no such considerations. They would just bulldoze through (the cases).

“They would not know anything about our adat (customs) yet would go ahead and hear the cases,” Ng said.

Ng, who has in the past been critical of former chief justice Mohamed Raus Sharif’s role in the administration of the judiciary then, said he was caught off guard when court officials today asked him if he still wanted this bench to hear his two appeals or postpone it to a later date when a judge with Borneo judicial experience becomes available.

“They asked all of us,” he said, referring also to lawyer Simon Siah, who was handling the other two NCR cases.

All four cases will now be heard before a different bench on February 20 next year.

One of Ng’s cases that was to be heard today was on a NCR land extinguishment and acquisition case.

The NCR claimants were Kedayan landowner Mustapha Salleh of Kg Haji Wahid and his family.

Their dispute with the Sarawak government involved a plot of land on Canada Hill, which they claimed their ancestors first cleared in the 1920s.

Ng said the Sarawak Land and Survey Superintendent had used Section 5(2) of the Sarawak Land Code to extinguish their native rights over the land.

NCR land is an emotional issue in the state.

The decisions of high-profile cases, such as the celebrated Tuai Rumah Sandah case, had led to a charged atmosphere among Dayak landowners.

Angry Dayaks in the Dayak National Congress (DNC) had last February called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to investigate allegations of wrongdoing in the judiciary.

DNC president Paul Raja had then said any RCI should cover allegations raised by Court of Appeal judge Hamid Sultan Abu Backer in his affidavit and the judicial judgments on NCR land in Sarawak.

The demand that judges with Borneo judicial experience sit on Court of Appeal and Federal Court benches in cases involving local customs has been made for some time.

Sarawak Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg had recently hinted that a decision on the issue was nigh when he disclosed that Sarawak and Sabah’s attorney-generals were discussing the issue with the federal attorney-general.

The chief minister also said the state and federal A-Gs were also discussing the devolution of power for the Borneo courts. – September 4, 2019.