Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

© Malaysiakini (Used by permission)
By Soon Li Tsin

A near-record crowd of lawyers easily fulfilled the quorum needed for the Bar Council’s extraordinary general meeting (EGM) today to vote in favour of three motions regarding the controversial Legal Profession (Amendment) Bill.

The members had earlier been up in arms when the Bar Council set the EGM date at very short notice, giving them just 12 days to gather 2,500 lawyers needed to fulfil the quorum criteria.

GK Ganesan, 45, one of the leading requisitionist told malaysiakini that he was elated when 3,243 lawyers turned up at the closed-door meeting this afternoon.

Quorum was reached at 3:20pm today at Dewan Lee Sang Choon, Wisma MCA in Kuala Lumpur today.

“When the meeting started, the house rose and wanted to pass the motions without even going into any debates,” he said. The meeting lasted a mere 15 minutes.

“It was an overwhelming majority and all motions were passed against this draconian and unfair legislation,” he said.

He also noted that this was the first time in 20 years that quorum was not only reached in single day but had exceeded by over 1,000 members.

The requisition was filed on July 30 and the developments have been swift as this matter was of urgency.

The motions include the request to the Bar Council to get government assistance in halting a number of contentious issues involving the Act, which had been passed by Parliament but has yet been gazetted.

Far-reaching implications

This include the far-reaching implications affecting members over disciplinary measure and procedures and in removing the right to judicial review of any decision made by the Bar Council’s disciplinary board.

Among the clauses being disputed are the amended sections 76(2) and (3), which state that secrecy can be maintained by the members of the examining board, the Bar Council, the disciplinary board and committee and its staff.

In effect, they are exempted from disclosing any information relating to such proceedings or matters in court.

Another amendment relates to section 103E(2) which states that “there shall be no judicial review against any decision or order made by the disciplinary board”.

This effectively limits the appeals mechanism which lawyers can now access should they appear before the disciplinary board.

Other contested amendments include the curtailment of lawyers’ right to be heard; breach of lawyers’ right against self-incrimination; and wide powers given to the board to make restitution orders against lawyers.

Another motion that was passed was the setting up of an ad-hoc committee consisting of no more than seven senior members of the Malaysian Bar to carry out an in-depth study on the effects of the amendments.

Bar Council president Yeo Yang Poh confirmed that the Bar Council will be discussing this ad-hoc committee issue in tomorrow’s council meeting.

“We have no problems with the motions that were passed. What we are doing next is to set up the ad-hoc committee and we have also received their request to speak to the government on putting the bill on hold,” when contacted.

Related stories:

Majority want second look at Act

Bar seeks to put changes on hold

Bar says no to DB Amendments

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed