A senior lawyer has offered his support to the Bar Council's stand that judges should be promoted based on seniority.

Karpal Singh, who is also a leader of the opposition DAP, lamented that seniority was no longer a criteria for promotion of judges in the judiciary which was the case right up to the 70s.

"Leap-frogging should be eliminated as this certainly points towards a lack of transparency... Disrespect for seniority reflected in promotions only leads to deterioration in the quality of performance of judges who are, after all, human," he said.

Karpal urged for the return to the convention of seniority as the mainstay for judicial promotion.

"There has to be justice for judges. Any departure from this salutary prerequisite should be avoided."

Three vacancies

With today's death of Federal Court judge Mohtar Abdullah, there are currently three vacancies in the country's highest court.

The president of the Court of Appeal - the No 2 in the judicial hierarchy - has been left vacant since the appointment of Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Halim as chief justice early this year.

On Saturday, Bar Council chairperson Kuthubul Zaman Bukhari threatened to call an extraordinary general meeting of its 10,000-strong legal body in the event that senior judges are again bypassed in the next round of promotions, especially when these are not fully and publicly explained.

By convention, the council said senior judges in the Court of Appeal should be promoted to the Federal Court while senior High Court judges be subsequently tapped to fill the resultant vacancies in the appellate court.

The five most senior Court of Appeal judges are Gopal Sri Ram, Mokhtar Sidin, Denis Ong Jiew Fook, Abdul Hamid Mohamad and Abdul Kadir Sulaiman; whereas the five most senior High Court judges are Faiza Tamby Chik, James Foong, Ian Chin Hon Chong, Azmel Maamor and Vincent Ng Kim Khoay.

"If these senior judges are bypassed in promotions in favour of junior ones, there must exist very cogent and relevant reasons which must be disclosed and fully explained to the public," Kuthubul said.

"Anything less than a full and convincing explanation will immediately damage public confidence in the administration of justice," Kuthubul said.

Leap-frogging beneficiary

He warned that this would create the perception that judicial promotions might be based on subjective favouritism, or, worse still, might be a form of reward to a selected few.

Chief justice Ahmad Fairuz was himself a beneficiary of the leap-frogging policy.

His promotion as the Court of Appeal president last year - which overlooked a more senior judge - was publicly criticised by former Bar Council chairperson Raja Aziz Addruse.

After a few months as the judiciary's No 2, Ahmad Fairuz was appointed the chief justice.

Over the past decade, there have been complaints that senior judges were blatantly overlooked for promotions, creating some disquiet within the judiciary.