AG's Chambers should be free from political influence - Jaharberdeen

KUALA LUMPUR: The Attorney-General's Chambers should be free from political influence, said lawyer Datuk Seri Jahaberdeen Mohamed Yunoos.

He was commenting on rumors that some political leaders would be released by the Attorney General's Chambers from court cases due to the current political situation.

He said the people's negative perception of the institution needs to be corrected.

"I am deeply saddened by this being an issue in this country, where there is a perception that the Attorney General's Chambers can be influenced by politics.

"This matter is very disturbing and it is sad to hear this thing ... when such a perception occurs, we must not have a fire-fighting attitude, we look back at why this perception occurs.

"To solve a problem we have to go back to what created the problem.

"And if we look back at the past two, three years ... we find there are some politicians brought to court and we see after the new government takes over, those politicians brought to court has been released," he said when contacted by Astro AWANI.

He said, such actions not only tarnished the institution but also gave a bad image regarding the integrity and transparency of the legislature.

"Now there is a perception whether there is a bargaining political instability among these politicians ... whether the Attorney General's Chambers will be used to release some politicians.

"In my opinion, the people should take care of government institutions such as the Attorney General's Chambers, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and all of them are the people's institutions.

“We should take care of them and not allow politicians to use these institutions," he said.

Meanwhile, commenting on the current political situation, Jahaberdeen said all politicians need to be more mature and focused on curbing the COVID-19 epidemic.

Even sadder, he said, this country has been hit by a political pandemic before COVID-19.

"We see our problem before the COVID-19 pandemic. We already have a problem, look at the political pandemic since May 8, 2020. Until now the issue of who the Prime Minister is and who forms the government has not been resolved.

"The PH government fell in March and continued by PN to be the government. We have a problem for the first time in Malaysia from May until now it still exists ... (that is) who will be the PM.

"This is a very important question ... it will create a situation of political instability that scares traders and investors," he said.

Therefore, the political polemic, said Jahaberdeen, should be resolved immediately while the 15th General Election (GE-15) would be held in the next two years.

The impact on the people at this time needs to be given full attention by every political leader, he said.

"Does the Constitution allow us to declare an emergency in Malaysia?

"Maybe the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah can set up a committee, I believe we do not need more than 12 ministers, so we have a committee.

"We need to be careful and explore with the lawyers whether this is the best atmosphere that we have a Malaysian community committee to govern Malaysia.

“Here I hope all politicians are a little generous to the people until GE-15," he said.