Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on July 18, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: The Institutional Reforms Committee (IRC) will be briefing the Council of Eminent Persons (CEP) on its recommendations this week, having submitted its fourth and final report to the CEP on Monday.

“The report contains recommendations pertaining to key institutions as well as reforms to laws that impinge upon fundamental liberties. These recommendations are what we consider to be necessary steps for the reforms that the country needs,” the IRC said in a statement yesterday.

Chaired by former Court of Appeal judge Datuk KC Vohrah, the five-member committee has examined several areas for reform, including parliament, elections, the judiciary, law officers and legal services, anti-corruption, as well as the police and immigration. It has also looked into communications, media and information as well as human rights institutions and laws.

According to its statement, the IRC had made several immediate recommendations on matters which it considered to be urgent, most of which had been incorporated in the report. Of the approximately 1,000 submissions, letters and emails from the public, it said many written submissions, though not directly connected with the scope of its study, “raised issues which require attention”.

“We are referring these to the relevant government agencies for their action,” the committee said.

On top of that, several areas of national importance could not be sufficiently dealt with over the course of its study, and the committee has recommended further studies be conducted on these issues. “We thank everyone who took the time and trouble to make submissions to the committee and those who attended dialogue sessions with us,” it said, adding that the written and oral submissions had given them vital information.

The IRC, which was established on May 15, said it had also received “representations of a personal nature which we could not deal with as they are beyond the ambit of this committee”. Its members include Suhakam commissioner and former Court of Appeal Judge Datuk Mah Weng Kwai, National Patriots Association president Brig Gen (Rtd) Datuk Mohamed Arshad Raji, professor of law at University Malaya Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi and the National Human Rights Society president Datuk S Ambiga.

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