Putrajaya claims KPIs not affecting court judgments
By Clara Chooi, The Malaysian Insider
Putrajaya claimed today the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set to clear backlog court cases were not resulting in shoddy judgments, pointing out that no specific case had forwarded to support the accusation.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz told Parliament today that he had spoken on the issue to Chief Justice Tun Zaki Azmi.
“I have answered on this many times and I was informed by the Chief Justice that whenever asked, in truth, on specific cases when certain parties made less than satisfactory judgements because of the KPIs, until today, there has been none,” he told the House.
Nazri however pledged the government’s commitment to investigate such cases if there were ever specific complaints made.
“We would like to say here that we will not, for the sake of the KPIs, sacrifice the course of justice,” he said.
Nazri was responding during Question Time to John Fernandez (DAP-Seremban), who had pointed out to the de facto law minister earlier that he had heard of numerous complaints from “legal circles” that the KPIs introduced in the government’s “Tracking System” more than a year back to clear backlog court cases had only badly affected the quality of judgements.
“And in my view – justice hurried is justice buried,” he said.
Legal practitioners have launched a series of complaints against the KPIs set for to expedite court cases, pointing out that it did not seek to improve the administration of justice.
