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The Bar Council will convene an emergency general meeting to examine issues relating to the integrity of the judiciary following the recent controversy surrounding Chief Justice Eusoff Chin's 1994 holiday in New Zealand.

In a statement issued today, Bar Council president Sulaiman Abdullah said that it was "imperative" that the Malaysian Bar deliberate on issues raised by the recent events as they had "given rise to serious public concern as to the administration of justice, the judiciary, the proper relationship between members of the judiciary and members of the Bar, and most importantly, the respective roles of the executive and the judiciary".

The date of the meeting and its agenda have not been finalised although sources have told malaysiakini that the Bar will move a resolution calling for the Chief Justice's resignation and for a tribunal to be set up to investigate the allegations of impropriety against him.

Eusoff admitted this week that he had been investigated by the Anti-Corruption Agency over the holiday where he said he "bumped" into prominent lawyer V.K Lingam, but that he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Sulaiman also sought to clarify news reports which implied that the Bar Council had, through its then president Dr Cyrus Das, examined documents relating to the holiday and pronounced itself satisfied with Eusoff's explanation that he had paid for the holiday ("[#1] Holiday with lawyer a coincidence[/#] ", June 6).

Sulaiman noted that the Bar Council was never called upon to examine the issue although Cyrus was shown documents relating to the trip by Eusoff at a meeting in 1999.

Cyrus was said to have "politely advised the Chief Justice to keep the documents safely" but felt it was unnecessary to report the incident to the Bar Council as he (Cyrus) was no longer the president.

Sulaiman further explained that when the photographs of the Eusoff and lawyer Lingam surfaced in public in 1998, R.R Chelvarajah and Mah Weng Kwai, then vice-president and secretary of the Bar respectively, met with the Chief Justice and requested that he disqualify himself from sitting on a panel hearing the appeal of lawyer Param Cumraswamy as Lingam was a legal counsel in the case.

Following the meeting, Eusoff told Cyrus, who was still president at the time, that he will not sit in any hearing where Lingam was appearing as counsel.

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