Bar honours 2 former presidents for lifetime achievement

 

Former Bar presidents Hendon Mohamed and the late Sulaiman Abdullah received awards for their lifetime achievements.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Bar has presented lifetime achievement awards to two former presidents, Hendon Mohamed and the late Sulaiman Abdullah, for their contributions to the legal field.

Hendon, the first Malay woman called to the Bar in 1963, became the first female Bar Council president from 1993 to 1995. Sulaiman, who died in December last year, led the Bar from 2000 to 2001.

Former president Karen Cheah said that Hendon, now 89 years old, was one of the most active members of the Bar. “She has been described as a person petite in size but gutsy and feisty,” Cheah said at the award ceremony here today.

She recalled that during Hendon’s tenure, the Bar opposed a proposal by the attorney-general to broaden the Bar Council to include representatives of the corporate sectors and academia.

Another ex-Bar president Ambiga Sreenevasan described Sulaiman as someone with the courage to defend what he believed was right.

She cited an incident where a judge wanted to cite Sulaiman for contempt, to which he was ready to go to prison for the Bar. “He did not flinch in his decision to stand his ground,” Ambiga said. The contempt bid was subsequently dropped.

Sulaiman’s son, playwright and director Huzir, who accepted the award on his father’s behalf, said his father always upheld the legal profession’s principles, particularly when it came to privacy and confidentiality.

“He once got a call from someone while watching a tennis match on the TV. He listened to the caller and then said, ‘No, Datuk. I will not advise Tuanku to do so,’ and hung up. I asked him who the ‘Tuanku’ was, and he just told me, ‘You know I can’t tell,’ before going back to the tennis match,” Huzir said.

Sulaiman previously represented Anwar Ibrahim in the 1998 abuse of power and the sodomy 1 cases.

He also appeared for former Perak menteri besar, Nizar Jamaluddin, who was toppled in 2009 after three assemblymen declared they no longer supported the Pakatan Rakyat leadership and threw their support behind Barisan Nasional.

He had also represented the state in prominent cases, including the Catholic Church’s challenge on the use of the word “Allah”, Lina Joy’s attempt to remove the word “Islam” from her MyKad, and a constitutional challenge by three transgenders in Negeri Sembilan against a state shariah enactment banning cross-dressing.

In 2018, Sulaiman was appointed as lead prosecutor in Najib Razak’s SRC International trial. - FMT