Judge accused of judicial interference may become CJ soon, Rafizi predicts

Former economy minister Rafizi Ramli warns that a senior judge accused of judicial interference may become the chief justice soon.

During a forum on the judiciary tonight, Rafizi predicted that this will start with acting Chief Justice Hasnah Hashim and acting Court of Appeal President Zabariah Yusof being officially appointed to the posts soon, while the implicated judge will be officially nominated as the chief judge of Malaya.

However, he noted that both Hasnah and Zabariah are on a six-month extension to their tenure - and are scheduled to retire in November and October, respectively.

This, he said, will open the doors for the implicated judge to go up the ranks again, to become chief justice.

"Meaning five-six months down the line, we will get a chief justice who is on record - from the leaked (Judicial Appointments Commission - JAC) minutes - has accusations against him," he said.

The PKR lawmaker was referring to a leak of purported JAC meeting minutes from May, which appeared to corroborate allegations of judicial interference that surfaced last month after a police report lodged on the judge's behalf was also leaked.

While Rafizi named the judge, Malaysiakini is withholding his identity pending his response.

Rafizi warned that if his predictions come true, it will have huge implications and could demoralise judges who serve with integrity and fairness.

Earlier, Rafizi had voiced concerns that rich elites who were behind the VK Lingam judge fixing scandal are also involved in the current crisis, in order to get favourable outcomes in unspecified court cases.

Public attention goal

During the forum, Rafizi was asked whether he was satisfied with the level of support he and eight other PKR MPs received in their push for a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into the judiciary scandal.

The Pandan MP replied that there were no other MPs - either from the opposition or within Pakatan Harapan - who had come forward to stand with them on the issue.

However, Rafizi said he believed they had nonetheless succeeded in shining a light on the matter.

"When the nine of us decided (to push for RCI), we didn't expect support from people.

"But even with just nine MPs, I believe we have reached our objective, (which is) to get public attention.

"We just wanted to lend a voice to other stakeholders. We just added our voice," he said.

The nine MPs were also not expecting any support coming from Perikatan Nasional, Rafizi said, after seeing divided responses from among the opposition MPs.

However, the former PKR deputy president planned to make some calls to several people to woo support from other government backbenchers.

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