Prove BTN courses weren’t political, LFL tells Chief Registrar

Lawyers for Liberty questions the Chief Registrar's claim that there was nothing political about the mandatory courses for judges held just before GE14.

Lawyers for Liberty adviser N Surendran.

PETALING JAYA: Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) took the office of the Chief Registrar of the Federal Court to task today over its response to the group’s claims that judges and judicial officers had been targeted for indoctrination through courses held by Biro Tata Negara (BTN).

In a statement, it said the Chief Registrar’s defence that the courses were not for political indoctrination “merely created more disturbing questions and produced no satisfactory answers”.

LFL adviser N Surendran also challenged the Chief Registrar to release the full contents and audio recordings of the programmes to prove its claim.

In a statement yesterday, the Chief Registrar’s office said it had supervised the course modules which were not entirely under BTN.

It said the modules were on team-building and were meant to instil patriotism and a team spirit among its staff.

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

It said the courses had been planned ahead of time and the fact that they were held on the eve of the election was a coincidence.

However, Surendran said this was far-fetched, considering that three separate BTN programmes were held in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Kedah just three weeks before the election.

“Is that just a coincidence?”

He also slammed the claim by the Chief Registrar’s office that BTN was brought in to organise the courses “to save costs”, calling it “highly improbable and perplexing”.

“Surely there are better ways to ‘save costs’ than to let the racist and politically controversial BTN organise the courses,” he said.

“Further, the BTN is a unit under the Prime Minister’s Department.

“It is a flagrant breach of the doctrine of separation of powers to force judges to attend courses organised by a unit of the executive such as the BTN.

“Is it logical to undermine the doctrine of separation of powers simply in order to ‘save costs’? The executive has no business to give any lectures to judges, who must be seen to be completely independent.”

Surendran said LFL was now also able to reveal that on Feb 27, just weeks before the three BTN courses, the Chief Registrar’s office had ordered judges, deputy registrars and judicial officers to attend a compulsory “special discussion” on Najib Razak’s National Transformation 2050 (TN50) programme.

“TN50 has been widely criticised as a political gimmick of Najib and Barisan Nasional; it is thus an overtly political activity. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with enhancing judicial or professional skills.

“Why did the Judicial Capacity Training Division of the Chief Registrar’s office organise such a programme?” - FMT