SET up a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) to reform the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC).
So urged Pengerang MP and Deputy Dewan Rakyat Speaker Azalina Othman Said. Among others, Azalina said the RCI should look into breaking up the roles of the AGC to prevent internal conflicts of interest.
It’s not the first call by Azalina on the matter. In February, she had made the same call for reforms to the appointment and functions of the attorney-general.
“One crucial reform urgently required to restore the public’s faith in the office of the A-G and by extension, in the government of any day is to speedily separate the A-G from the public prosecutor. I have been insisting on this since way back in June 2018,” said Azalina.
SEPARATE the two roles – the office of attorney-general (A-G) and public prosecutor (PP).
So urged Dewan Rakyat deputy speaker Azalina Othman Said following the furore and controversies generated by the publication of the memoir of former A-G Tommy Thomas.
This is the second call in two weeks for the roles to be separated. The previous call was made by Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) following the release of Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on January 28. Malaysia’s score deteriorated to 51 points in 2020 compared to 53 points in 2019. Malaysia’s ranking in the CPI also deteriorated from 51 in 2019 to 57 in 2020.
The drop of six places means that compared to other countries Malaysia is not improving as well as other countries in efforts to fight corruption. According to TI-M, one of the possible reasons for this deterioration is that institutional reforms have stalled, including the separation of powers between the A-G and PP