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Pensions at king's request

by: V. Vasudevan, Eileen Ng, R.S. Kamini and Irdiani Salleh

THREE former Supreme Court judges were given pensions only after the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in 1988 wrote to the chief secretary to the government on the matter, the Dewan Rakyat heard yesterday.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz said the then king had asked in a letter that they be given pensions on compassionate grounds.

He said this when explaining his erroneous contention last week that former lord president Tun Salleh Abas and five former Supreme Court judges were told to retire early rather than that they were sacked.

"It is true that they were sacked. I regret if my statement in Parliament may have caused difficulties to anyone, but it was not deliberate."

Nazri said he had based his statement on the assumption that people sacked from the government service were not entitled to receive pensions.
He was setting the record straight after his predecessor, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad disputed his statement last week that the judges were told to retire and had not been sacked.

Nazri said information on the letter from the king had surfaced only after he directed the cabinet secretariat to investigate the issue of pensions to the judges.

On the decision to disclose the ex gratia payments to the five judges, he said it was the official policy of the government to inform the public of whatever it did.

"Whatever that we do, we inform the public, including about the ex gratia payments, because the money belongs to the rakyat. We should not have made agreements with the judges. There is no question of not revealing (the figure)."

Nazri said he would never have disclosed the amount if members of parliament had not requested it.

Nazri told the house last week that Salleh was paid RM5 million while former Supreme Court judges Datuk George Seah and the family of the late Wan Suleiman Pawanteh received RM2 million each.

The other judges who were later reinstated after being suspended, Tan Sri Azmi Kamaruddin, Wan Hamzah Mohamed Salleh and the late Tan Sri Eusoffe Abdoolcadeer, received RM500,000 each.

On the Malaysian Commission on Anti-Corruption Bill, Nazri said he would table it as soon as it was printed.

"How can I give (the house) the bill if it is not printed? I can understand Lim Kit Siang's request, but I will table it for the first reading when the bill is printed in blue," he said.

The MP for Ipoh Timur had asked Nazri to speed up the tabling of the bill to allow public feedback and debate before a parliamentary vote.

Nazri had said he would table the bill for first reading by Dec 11.