by Parliamentary-Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Saturday, 21st March, 1992:
Manjeet Singh should state whether Dr. Mahathir is right in accusing the Bar Council of being influenced by Opposition parties on its stand on the Lord President, Tun Hamid Omar.
Former Bar Council President, Manjeet Singh is now em¬broiled in a public controversy with the Bar Council, which accused him of taking a stand wholly inconsistent with the position he had throughout taken during the period when he held office in the Bar Council and the views he had been expressing at home and abroad until, the end of last year.
Manjeet Singh has issued a public denial, claiming that he had been consistent with his past stand.
Referring to his resignation, as Bar Council Chairman at the commencement of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Bar, the Bar Council pointed out that election to the post of president for the following year would have taken place immediately after the AGM, and that Manjeet Singh’s re-election was doubtful because he had forfeited the confidence of many members of the Council.
The public have been thoroughly confused by the Manjeet Singh controversy. As Manjeet Singh said at the June 1991 Common¬wealth Lawyers’ Association in London, the 1988 Judicial Crisis had “knocked the Judiciary back something like 20 years”, there seems to be an attempt to ‘knock back’ the Malaysian Bar for many years as well.
I do not want to get involved in the controversy between, the Bar Council and Manjeet Singh.
However, there is one important matter I feel Manjeet Singh owes the public and country a duty.
After the Bar AGM last Saturday rejecting the motions which would have given retrospective recognition to the improper and uncon¬stitutional expulsion of Tun Salleh Abas, as Lord President and the dismissal of Tan Sri Wan Sulaiman and Datuk George Seah as Supreme Court judges, the Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, hit out at the Bar Council as being “influenced by the Opposition parties” and acting “out of frustriation for not being able to gain power to rule the country through the democratic process”
As Manjeet Singh Dhillon has become the ‘darling’ of the Barisan NasionaI Government, being publicly praised by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and other UMM0 Minister’s, he should state publicly whether Dr. Mahathir was making completely unfounded and baseless allegations against the Bar Council, or whether Dr. Mahathir was right and that all these years, the Bar Council had been influenced by the Opposition parties on its stand on Tun Hamid Omar as Lord President.
Manjeet Singh, should realise that his silence on Dr. Mahathir’s charge that the Bar Council had been influenced by Opposition parties in its stand on the Judiciary Crisis and the position of Tun Hamid might be misconstrued, as his agreement, now that he has become the ‘darling’ of the Government.