LFL: Judicial officers made to attend economic talk by Umno man

Lawyers for Liberty questions Lokman Noor Adam's qualifications to give such a lecture, calling the event a breach of the doctrine of separation of powers.

Lawyers for Libery adviser N Surendran says more evidence has surfaced of attempts to politicise the judiciary under Barisan Nasional.

PETALING JAYA: Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) today claimed to have received new evidence of “concerted attempts” to politicise the judiciary under Najib Razak and Barisan Nasional (BN), saying judicial officers and court registrars were instructed to attend a ceramah by Umno leader Lokman Noor Adam on the “economic policy” of the BN government.

The lawyers group said the Chief Registrar of the Federal Court, Latifah Mohd Tahar, had directed the officers to attend the event held at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya on May 24 last year.

Attendance was compulsory, it added, with those forced to attend including deputy registrars, senior assistant registrars and special officers to the chief justice and the appellate judges.

LFL adviser N Surendran said Lokman was an Umno leader and a staunch supporter of the former prime minister. He was also the Umno candidate in the recent Sungai Kandis by-election, which showed the strength of his party credentials, Surendran added.

He said at the time of the ceramah, Lokman had also held a political appointment at the finance ministry which was helmed by Najib.

“The simple fact of the matter is that having Umno’s Lokman Adam as the invited speaker made it a political event under the guise of an ‘economics’ talk.

“This is in flagrant breach of the doctrine of separation of powers and the concept of an independent judiciary,” he said in a statement.

He also questioned the chief registrar’s order for judicial officers to attend the ceramah, asking what the actual content had been.

“There can be no reasonable or acceptable grounds for such a ceramah. Judges are concerned with the law, not the economic policy of the government in power.”

He also queried Lokman’s qualifications to give such a talk, saying the Umno man had no economic qualifications.

“If, for whatever reason, it was truly intended to give judges a proper lecture on economics, why were university economics professors or qualified economists not invited as speakers?”

This, taken with the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) and National Transformation 2050 (TN50) courses earlier revealed by LFL, amounted to a “rampant politicisation and indoctrination of the judiciary”, he said.

Last month, LFL revealed that Sessions Court judges were made to attend a BTN course on the eve of the general election.

It said it had also received documents showing that registrars, officers and staff of the Palace of Justice as well as the Kuala Lumpur and Shah Alam courts were also forced to attend another BTN course one week after the sessions judges’ course.

Earlier this month, LFL said it was able to reveal that on Feb 27, just weeks before the BTN courses were held in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Kedah, the chief registrar’s office had ordered judges, deputy registrars and judicial officers to attend a compulsory “special discussion” on Najib’s TN50 programme.

Surendran said today that the same chief registrar who organised the BTN courses and TN50 programme had also organised the ceramah featuring Lokman.

“The government has changed, but this chief registrar occupies the same position. She must now be relieved of her position pending further inquiry or investigations,” he added.

The office of the chief registrar has denied that the courses were meant for political indoctrination, saying the modules were on team-building and meant to instil patriotism and a team spirit among its staff.

It also denied any ulterior motive in the timing of the courses, just before the May 9 general election.

It said it had supervised the course modules which were not entirely under BTN. -FMT