Many legal reforms promised by Pakatan Harapan could not materialise during its 22 months as government because no minister took ownership to see the plans through, Tommy Thomas said.
Speaking at a forum yesterday, the former attorney-general said an exception was in the case of Undi18 and automatic voters registration which had Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman going the extra mile to make this happen.
"The Harapan government never had a two-thirds majority (in the Dewan Rakyat), so it was not possible (to get bills that require constitutional amendment passed).
"But the Harapan government did manage to amend the Constitution once, which was to pass the Undi18.
"The minister in charge, Syed Saddiq, took ownership of that bill and managed to go and get all parties to support it. The bill was passed with unanimous support," he said.
Thomas was speaking at a forum organised by electoral reform group Bersih and the Bar Council held at a hotel in Petaling Jaya.
He was part of three speakers invited to share their thoughts in a session titled 'Separation of Attorney-General and Public Prosecutor: Roadmap for Reform'.
Recalling the times when Undi18 was being pushed by Harapan, Thomas said Syed Saddiq had managed to "charm and convince" other MPs, including those from the then opposition, to support the bill.
"There was no equivalent of Syed Saddiq in the cabinet as law reform, in the sense of tabling a bill, has to be under a minister of a cabinet.
"No one took ownership of the (reform plan) to separate the role of the attorney-general and public prosecutor," he added.
Thomas' remarks came about when he was answering a question from the session moderator, Dr Abdul Halim Yusof, who wanted the former attorney-general to explain to the audience the reasons behind Harapan's failure to fulfil its promises to introduce law reforms when it was in power, including to split the attorney-general's power.
On July 16, 2019, the Dewan Rakyat passed a bill to amend the Federal Constitution to lower the voting age to 18. The bill was passed by a vote of 211. There were no abstentions or nays.
Meanwhile, during the forum, Thomas and other speakers, former law minister Azalina Othman Said and lawyer Andrew Yong, discussed two different models of the attorney-general's role in a country.
According to Yong, who made a presentation on the matter, one of the models is the Westminster, where an attorney-general is a member of the legislature as well as the executive - which he described as being "politico-legal".
The second model, he said, is where an attorney-general plays a "purely legal" role, where he or she sits outside the political sphere. - Mkini
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