Merdeka!

I was at the Stadium on Monday to witness the National Day Silver Jubilee celebrations. I also attended the first National Day celebration at the same place in 1984 (I'm feeling really old now!). Maybe my memory is a little hazy but I sort of remember that the first National day celebration was a much grander affair. His Majesty in his Titah this year recalls the developments in this country not only for the past 25 years but beyond. I think it is therefore appropriate to reflect on the developments in the legal field to see what had been achieved and where we are heading.

To understand the current legal system, we need to go back over 100 years. No surprise, the 1906 agreement with Britain not only brought a new system of administration, the whole legal system was totally overhauled- orang putih Resident using orang putih laws in orang putih courts. Never mind the locals who had been applying a Syaria derived code known as Kanun Brunei at the time. The Courts Enactment 1906 in essence established the legal system as we know it today. The highest court for Brunei at the time was the Courts of Straits Settlement. The highest local court was the Court of the Resident followed by the Magistrate Court First Class, Magistrate Court Second Class and the lowest in the tier the Kathi Court. Thus began the parallel system of civil courts and the religious court which exists until today. The same enactment also imported the laws from the Straits Settlements derived from English common law and no surprise that our legal system is still based on the common law. Most of our written laws are similar to those countries sharing the common law heritage in particular Malaysia and Singapore.

So what has changed in the last 25 years? There has been a marked increase in the number of locals in the Judiciary-0 local High Court Judges in 1984, 3 now. All the Magistrates are now local. But the Chief Justice, the President of the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal Judges are still foreigners. We had less than 10 lawyers in the Attorney General's office then, we have over 80 now. The majority of private lawyers are now locals compared with just a tiny minority before. Some things changed but a little. As stated above, we still have a parallel system of courts. The jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, the reincarnation of the old Kadi courts, is still in general restricted to Islamic family law matters. We have His Majesty's commitment to a unified legal and judicial system eventually but the progress is slow. Will there be much progress in the next 25 years? The legal system is notoriously slow to change. I simply hope to see a local Chief Justice and appeal court judges in my lifetime. That would be progress indeed.