THE Attorney-General’s Chambers will prioritise the amendments to the Legal Profession Act 1976 (LPA) to remove all forms of government interference in the legal profession, including the election process of the Bar and other lawyers’ groups, said Attorney-General Tommy Thomas.

Thomas said his office is awaiting a draft of the amendments from the Malaysian Bar.

“In the new law, there should be no role for the A-G or any other state function,” Thomas told more than 500 delegates at his opening address of the International Malaysia Law Conference organised by the Bar in Kuala Lumpur today.

“Mr President, I am still waiting for a new draft bill and you have a free hand in drafting it,” he said, addressing Bar president George Varughese.

Also present at the conference were the Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, Chief Justice Richard Malanjum and other senior judges and lawmakers.

Lawyers criticised the previous Barisan Nasional government for moving to amend the LPA that would lead to changes in the leadership of the Malaysian Bar, the election process and the organisation of annual meetings. 

The amendments would have allowed the government to appoint two officials to sit on the Bar Council. The previous government also consulted lawyers and lawmakers on the proposals. 

Plans for any amendment have been shelved following the defeat of BN at the May 9 elections, with Thomas saying today he will “advise the government” on the LPA as soon as the draft is ready. 

Thomas also confirmed that he met with Bar leaders on June 11.

The A-G’s Chambers will cease to apply to strike out court challenges by litigants based on technicalities, he added. 

Government lawyers will no longer “rely on ouster clauses and will not object to litigants to pursue their grievances, but (to object) on merits of the complaints of the litigants”. 

Thomas today touched on the decline of the independence and quality of the judiciary following 60 years of uninterrupted rule by a political party. 

He said the federal constitution has been amended 57 times by political leaders seeking to “entrench their political control”. 

The two-thirds majority enjoyed by a single party until 2008 was utilised as a “knee-jerk reaction” for “self-serving” short-term gains without regard to the consequences. 

Thomas said May 9 was a date that “will go down in posterity” due to the mass rejection of “authoritarian and reactionary leaders” and said it was notable that the transfer of power was done without bloodshed. – August 14, 2018.