Opening address by former Yang di-Pertuan Agong and former Lord President of the Federal Court, HRH Sultan Azlan Shah, at the 14th Malaysian Law Conference… [Malaysianbar]
“50 Years of Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law”
Assalamaualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.
Salam Sejahtera.
Bismillahi Rahmanir Rahim.
This year marks the 50th year of our nation’s Independence. It is also the 50th year of our Merdeka Constitution.
Malaysia and its people have every reason to celebrate this joyous occasion as the country prospers as a constitutional democracy with a constitutional monarchy in the form as established by the Merdeka Constitution in 1957.
Not all countries that achieved their freedom at the end of the colonial period are today able to celebrate their independence with pride. Some are under military rule, whilst others have had their institutions undermined or even abolished.
The 50th anniversary of our independence is therefore an appropriate moment for all of us to reflect upon the strength of our constitutional system. As we rejoice in our success, It is important to be alert to the pitfalls of failure if proper regard is not given to our constitutional mechanisms.
We must ever be mindful that written constitutions are mere parchment pieces.
It is important that there must be, in the hearts and minds of those who are entrusted to administer and uphold the constitution, a belief in the values and principles that animate the august document.
I had occasion to observe when sitting in the Federal Court in 1977 that the “constitution is not a mere collection of pious platitudes”. I spoke then of the 3 essential features of our constitution. I said:
“It is the supreme law of the land embodying three basic concepts: One of them is that the individual has certain fundamental rights upon which not even the power of the state may encroach.
The second is the distribution of sovereign power between the states and the federation…
The third is that no single man or body shall exercise complete sovereign power, but that it shall be distributed among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, compendiously expressed in modern terms that we are a government of laws, not of men.”
The prescription that “we are a government of laws, not of men” describes the basic principle that runs through our entire constitution-the principle of the Rule of Law.
The Rule of Law is the defining feature of democratic government. In delivering the eleventh Tunku Abdul Rahman lecture in November 1984, I again defined it as follows:
“The Rule of Law means literally what it says: The Rule of the law. Taken in its broadest sense this means that people should obey the law and be ruled by it.
But in political and legal theory it has come to be read in a narrow sense, that the government shall be ruled by law and be subject to it.
The ideal of the Rule of Law in this sense is often expressed by the phrase “government by law and not by man””
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