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

© The Star (Used by permission)
Putik Lada by Kevin Kam Soo Aun

A KEY performance indicator (KPI), as its name suggests, is a measure of performance.

Such measures are commonly used to help an organisation define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term organisational goals. Basically, one is given numbers to achieve.

Recently, Chief Justice Tun Zaki Azmi assigned Key Performance Index (KPI) to the judiciary to boost efficiency and build public confidence – judges were given a target to dispose of a certain number of cases annually so as to speed up hearing of cases.

Whilst this move to expedite the hearing of cases should be lauded, will a KPI achieve the objective of striking a balance between the role of the judiciary which is to dispense justice and, at the same time, reducing delay in doing so?

Zaki recently acknowledged in an interview conducted by a past president of the Malaysian Bar that the KPI is meant to merely set a target for the judges and is not meant to be the determining factor in the assessment of whether a judge is efficient and good.

Notwithstanding this, this author wishes to discuss the general perceptions of this KPI, and in this respect, hopes that the judiciary would clear this perception.

KPI robs away the safeguards

There have always been allegations that some judges have forced litigants to settle cases. The thin line between “assisting” and “compelling” to settle becomes blurred.

Judges may conduct trials speedily, such as proceeding with trials even when informed that key witnesses are not ready, thus ignoring procedural safeguards under the court rules.

These are nothing new, especially during the clearing of pre-2000 cases when the previous Chief Justice, Tun Ahmad Fairuz, set the ball rolling by directing that cases registered before 2000 be given priority.

With the KPI, it becomes even more worrying as judges are “pressured” to “close” the cases. Disposing cases may be likened to closing the book without really reading the contents and judging the book by its cover. This will certainly deprive the litigants or the accused of a fair trial.

When cases are decided hastily, it gives the perception that cases may have been decided improperly. This creates dissatisfaction with the judgments of the courts and litigants may take it further on appeal.

Moreover, since it is not mandatory in our judicial system for judges to write grounds of judgments, appeals sometimes cannot be properly heard because of unavailability of the grounds. For instance, in the case of Hongkew Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd v. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co Ltd, Justice Sri Ram said that due to the judge’s failure to write a judgment the appellate court had to trawl through the appeal record (a record consisting of all the relevant pleadings and documents filed by the appellant in the appellate court) to understand the respective parties’ cases.

This then takes up more judicial time for one case and less for other cases, and in the long run, the very backlog that the courts now aim to clear perpetuates.

Evaluating the judges the wrong way?

The recent news wherein two judges have been asked to resign as they were “grossly inefficient” sent the wrong message to the judiciary and the public that it was linked to the KPI.

It is important to bear in mind that emphasis on the number of cases disposed of creates a mere superficial gauge of the performance of judges because the number of cases dealt with is not and cannot be a true reflection of the performance of judges.

There are many factors which make up a good judge, one of which is the number of good written grounds of judgment delivered, and the reasons/analysis of facts expounded in such judgments.

The true quality of a judge is based on, among other factors, judicial temperament, knowledge, and how such knowledge is applied to produce redress and justice, and definitely not by how many files he or she “closes”.

It is not fair to set KPIs for the judges when some courts are bogged down with more cases than others.

Put into motion, the KPI becomes a distorted and inaccurate indicator of performance in praise of numbers and not the true ability of the judges.

How to set what KPI for whom

A KPI for the judiciary is marred by geographical and jurisdictional difficulties.

Given the higher population in the cities, the courts there obviously have a higher number of cases filed compared to their counterparts in other areas.

In addition, civil cases which require more procedural hurdles generally take more time to complete than criminal matters which are more factual in nature. Appellate matters, some with records of appeal running to volumes, may need even more time to study.

As such, even if the KPI was meant to be a mere target, what KPI is for which judge and which court dealing with what matter is not easy to set and it definitely cannot be applied across the board.

In the judicial process, we cannot be concerned about statistics. The courts are not factories churning out cases to meet demands by hungry litigants.

The court’s duty to the public can only be discharged by providing fair trials, justice and redress to the litigants, not by looking nice with numbers.

Similarly, the stakeholders, i.e. the lawyers and prosecution, must also assist the Court by playing their part and not seek adjournments on lame grounds, so that there is no excuse for the Court to re-create this perception that its only concern are the numbers and statistics.

> The writer is a young lawyer. Putik Lada, or pepper buds in Malay, captures the spirit and intention of this column — a platform for young lawyers to articulate their views and aspirations about the law, justice and a civil society. For more information about the young lawyers, visit www.malaysianbar.org.my/nylc.