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©New Straits Times (Used by permission)
by V. Anbalagan

KUALA LUMPUR: It's no surprise that only a few non-Muslim couples on the verge of divorce have been reconciled by government-appointed tribunals.

Little thought seems to have gone into how the tribunals operate.

A case in point is the appointment of a 25-year-old bachelor as a tribunal chairman to hear the case of a middle-aged couple whose 13-year marriage was on the rocks.

There have also been instances of panels being put together at short notice to hear cases.

In some cases, some members on the panel are alleged to have humiliated the women before them by asking questions that trained counsellors would hesitate to ask.

Probably, the greatest weakness of the tribunals was that untrained civil servants were appointed to them without any inkling of what they were supposed to do.

Lawyers interviewed by the New Straits Times concurred that there was a lot to be desired where such tribunals were concerned.

They felt that the authorities were not serious about the manner in which the panels performed.

According to them, this was reflected in Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar's statement in the Dewan Rakyat that only a small number of marriages had been reconciled by the tribunals.

He had said that only 368 out of 12,666 cases referred to marriage tribunals between 2004 and 2006 had been resolved.

Under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act, a tribunal is expected to meet a couple at least three times within six months to save their marriage or proceed to issue a certificate if they could not be reconciled.

Lawyer Pushpa Ratnam cited the case of the young bachelor who was appointed as tribunal chairman as an example of the poor manner in which such posts were filled.

"How could one expect a bachelor to empathise with the problems of a couple with children whose 13 years of marriage was on the verge of a breakdown?" she asked.

Pushpa felt the tribunals were a mere administrative set-up for "couples with irreconciliable differences about to obtain a certificate for divorce and not a panel that tried to save marriages".

Lawyer Ravinder Singh Dhalliwal said most tribunals were inundated with a large number of cases and members became mechanical in their deliberations.

"They don't dwell on the problem but merely confirm that a couple's divorce is imminent," he said.

Lawyer Vicky Alahakone said the objective of setting up the tribunals when the act came into force in 1982 was to save the family institution.

"Unfortunately, unqualified and untrained civil servants were roped in.

"Even tribunal members were haphazardly assembled to attend to a case."

She described the entire process of going through the tribunal as a sham.

During divorce proceedings at the High Court in Ipoh four years ago, a marriage tribunal chairman confessed that he was neither trained to conduct reconciliation proceedings nor paid any allowance to carry out his duties.

This prompted judge Datuk V.T. Singham to comment that the tribunal did not make serious attempts to save a marriage but preferred to just issue certificates.

He had said tribunal members should be given at least basic guidelines on conducting matrimonial reconciliation proceedings.

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