COMMENT It is a widely accepted belief that the emasculation of the judicial branch of government in Malaysia began with the impeachment and removal from office of the chief judge of the country Salleh Abbas in 1988.

The entire process of his impeachment and sacking is writ in infamy in the annals of the third estate; the 22-year premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, during which the Salleh sacking occurred, is forever stained by the memory of that disgrace.

In a way, the frustration felt by Mahathir is his now year-long attempt to remove Najib Abdul Razak from office for what is seen as impeachable offences - the unsatisfactorily explained lodging of a donation of RM2.5 billion in the prime minister’s personal bank accounts and his supposed mishandling of sovereign wealth fund 1MDB - are the wages for Mahathir’s sin in sacking Salleh for faults comparatively trivial in comparison to Najib’s alleged transgressions.

The rest of our society must not be made to rely on the workings of karma to gain a dubious satisfaction for wrongs inflicted by an imperial PM after he has passed into dotage.

Hence the suggestion of just-retired Court of Appeal judge Mohd Hishamudin Mohd Yunus that the current system of judicial appointments - a process in which the PM is the main decider - ought to be ended in favour of one less vulnerable to ministerial fiat is an idea whose time has come.

Hishamudin proposed the change in the course of a law lecture at the Universiti Malaya yesterday.

We have it from Hishamudin himself that his elevation from the Court of Appeal to the Federal Court was obstructed by Najib on account of a judgment of his that the PM did not like.

Thus the highest bench in the country was deprived of the judicial brilliance and sagacity of one of the best legal minds in the country since the days when Eusoffe Abdoolcader sat on the bench.

Since Salleh Abbas’ sacking the country has seen a succession of chief judges selected for their penchant for compliance with the executive rather than for judicial excellence.

This mediocrity has come at the expense of judicial brains such as Hishamudin’s whom formidable opinion in the legal fraternity holds was the best judge never to become chief justice.

As recompense for being hard done by, a restorative karma ought to decree that the legal community look favourably at Hishamudin’s proposal that the Judicial Appointments Commission be expanded to include members of the Bar and the academic community so that the appointment process be less susceptible to prime ministerial whim.

Hishamudin also floated the idea of a constitutional court to decide matters that affect fundamental provisions embedded in the Federal Constitution.

This is another worthy idea but in matters of such grave import, it’s best to take suggestions for judicial change in a gradual and incremental manner, just like the judicial process itself: their wheels are slow to turn but turn they do.

The judicial appointments process is the graver task right now; it cries for restoration to the the impartiality and independence it enjoyed in the pre-Salleh sacking era.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.