DAP national chairperson Lim Kit Siang said the cabinet is duty-bound to look into Anwar's complaint against three top judges and decide if the prime minister should invoke Article 125 (3) and (9) of the constitution to set up a judicial tribunal.

Yesterday, former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim filed a police report from behind prison bars against Federal Court judge Pajan Singh Gill and two Court of Appeal judges Richard Malanjum and Hashim Yusof, alleging judicial misconduct and perversion of justice.

Anwar claimed the three judges had breached the law when they denied the existence of his notice of alibi, which was submitted in April last year in the court proceedings of his appeal against a sodomy conviction.

The notice of alibi sought to show that Anwar was elsewhere when the sodomy offence was committed.

A judicial tribunal can be established in two ways: through appointment by the Yang di Pertuan Agong on representation by the prime minister, or through the appointment by the chief justice after consulting the prime minister.

"As the prime minister acts on the advice of the cabinet, cabinet ministers are ... duty-bound to take cognizance of Anwar's grave complaint," said Lim.

Decision on Wednesday?

Cabinet should reach their decision at their Wednesday meeting, the DAP leader added.

"Although in the past three years, the rot in the judiciary had been stopped, Malaysia is still a long way off from fully restoring public confidence," said Lim.

The least Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi could do is face up to this acid test of accountability in his first 100 days as the country's leader, he said.

"Anwar's grave allegations of judicial misconduct would be watched closely, both nationally and internationally...to the question of whether there are grounds... to expect fundamental structural changes.

"It is most regrettable that my call in the past four years to take a leaf from the Canadian experience (with a Judicial Council) to uphold judicial accountability had been ignored, or we would today have a better and more satisfactory mechanism to deal with complaints."

First set up in 1971 to consider complaints about the conduct of federal judges, the Canadian Judicial Council is able to deal with complaints in a demonstrably open and equitable process - and not Malaysia's present dark, murky and subterranean one, Lim added.