Making Political Play Out Of English In Amendment Bills

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MPs were making a mountain out of a molehill about two amendment bills which were only in English, says a legal scholar.PETALING JAYA: Noted legal scholar Shad Saleem Faruqi has dismissed the “purely political” uproar created by opposition MPs over the English-only text in bills to amend the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code.
“The whole episode is purely political. People are making a mountain out of a molehill. No violation of any regulation is involved if we look at the relevant laws relating to the use of language in Parliament,” Shad told FMT.
Opposition MPs had questioned the use of only English in the bills to amend the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code to provide for the offence of stalking with some MPs asking if it was part of a bigger attempt to make English the country’s official language.
Shad Saleem Faruqi.Deputy law minister Ramkarpal Singh later said the bills were only in English because the text of the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code was in English.
Shad, who is emiritus professor of law at Universiti Malaya, said the National Language Act requires all parliamentary bills to be made in the national language and in English.

But exceptions were provided for laws enacted before September 1967 if the laws were not translated to Bahasa Malaysia and further declared by the King as the authoritative text. The Penal Code was enacted in 1935 and the CPC in 1936.
Shad said even the use of English in any parliamentary or state assembly sitting was permitted, as long as the speaker allowed it.
A Srimurugan, a lawyer who has written books on the two codes, said the official texts are in English “simply because it has been difficult to translate some English words into their natural meaning in Bahasa Malaysia.
Linguistic experts would be needed to accurately translate these laws, he said.
However,he called for a complete overhaul of the two laws to reflect modern offences, and then translating them to Bahasa Malaysia. He said the two old laws were “archaic and antiquated”. - FMT

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