KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Bar’s extraordinary general meeting (EGM), which was expected to address key issues on judicial independence, was dissolved after it failed to meet the required quorum, reports said.
According to Free Malaysia Today, Bar Council president Ezri Abdul Wahab told reporters that only 309 members were present at the meeting held at Menara Matrade, well short of the 500 members required for the EGM to proceed.
“I am disappointed (that it has been dissolved) because for each EGM we have to spend money,” he was quoted as saying in the report.
The EGM had been scheduled after calls emerged on July 1 to debate three motions.
Two of them were focused on safeguarding judicial independence, while the third sought to push for a fairer minimum pay scale for chambering pupils.
Ezri was set to table the motion titled “Judicial Independence”. Another motion, aimed at holding the prime minister accountable for what was perceived as a blow to public confidence in the judiciary, had been jointly proposed by lawyers Malik Imtiaz Sarwar and Surendra Ananth, and backed by four others.
A separate motion advocating for fairer pupil remuneration, put forward by lawyers Goh Cia Yee and Vince Tan, had received notable support from within the legal fraternity, with 190 lawyers seconding it.
“We felt the young lawyers wanted to speak up and that was why we organised the EGM,” Ezri added, expressing hope that more junior members would have shown up.
Former attorney-general Tan Sri Tommy Thomas was among those who attended the meeting.
Responding to a question on whether the poor turnout reflected declining confidence in the Malaysian Bar, its vice-president Anand Raj said, “The majority of members had entrusted us with the motion at the AGM in March.
“That motion passed, and what has happened in the last few months reflects that.”
He was referring to the earlier decision by the Bar to mount a legal challenge against the Federal Territories Pardons Board over the reduced prison sentence for former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in the SRC International case.
This is not the first time a Malaysian Bar meeting has had to be called off due to a failure to meet quorum requirements.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
