On the Speaker’s letter and the sanctity of Parliament

Armchair constitutional theorists have been up in arms about the letter by Dewan Rakyat Speaker Azhar Harun to the High Court on ex-prime minister Najib Razak’s behalf.

The suggestion was put to the Speaker that he was directing the High Court to grant an adjournment for the Pekan MP and in doing so had disregarded the doctrine of separation of powers and had encroached on the domain of the judiciary.

“Are you trying to set a precedent,” Chang Lih Kang (PH-Tanjung Malim) asked the Speaker on Monday.

Surely, he exaggerates. MPs in the past have regularly sought and obtained adjournments of court cases on account of needing to fulfil their parliamentary duties.

Broadly speaking, government is divided into three branches, the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Each of these branches has a corresponding identifiable function. The doctrine of separation of powers requires each branch to remain within its own space and not encroach upon the other’s.

In this way each branch will be a check to the rest so that no single group of people will be able to control the machinery of the state.

Azhar duly denied he had instructed the judge to grant an adjournment but merely asked him to consider allowing Najib to deliver his speech on the Yang di-Pertuan Agong’s royal address.

It is hardly the equivalent of what the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom found to be a “constitutional coup” by prime minister Boris Johnson when, in the run-up to the Brexit deadline of Oct 31, he attempted to suspend Parliament for five weeks.

The move was declared unlawful because it prevented MPs from carrying out their duties.

“The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification,” said Lady Hale when delivering the unanimous decision on behalf of 12 justices.

Azhar’s impugned letter can hardly scale such dizzying heights. His own justification is that he is not in a position to dictate when and under what circumstances a court should grant an adjournment.

As the Speaker explained in his reply to Chang, unlike in the United Kingdom, parliament is not the supreme authority in Malaysia. The Federal Constitution is.

Our constitution provides that all three branches of government are equal.

Being equal partners in the administration of this country, no branch is subservient to the other. All three are called to jealously guard their respective jurisdictions and powers, and to check and balance each other out.

Azhar was merely asking for the judge to give due consideration to an MP who was scheduled to speak on the important matter of the royal address.

MPs should not be quick to criticise the Speaker for his actions. Rather they should be pleased that the Speaker was protecting the sanctity of parliament and their right to discharge their solemn duties as elected representatives.

The only question that should be asked is whether the Speaker will do the same whenever asked, irrespective of which side of the aisle an MP sits. Only time will tell.

Lim Tee Seng is an FMT reader