The 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service

RESPONSE of Tun Mohammed Suffian bin Hashim
Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
31 August 1975 Manila, Philippines

My wife and I are delighted to be here today to receive the Magsaysay Award. It came out of the blue on Saturday 3 August when at about 5:00 p.m. a friend in Kuala Lumpur rang me up at home to say that he heard announcement of it on TV a few minutes earlier. The Award came as a great and pleasant surprise.

Your late President Ramon Magsaysay cared for people and believed in the dignity and importance of the individual. He strove to improve the lot of his countrymen. He had courage, he had conviction. His ire was aroused whenever he saw injustice. He believed that freedom should be enjoyed by all. I shall strive to live up to the ideals that inspired him.

The Award is a great honor to me, personally, and I cannot express how happy I am to be in the distinguished company of so many eminent men and women who have been similarly rewarded, especially when I remember that two of the five Malaysian recipients were Prime Ministers.

The Award is, however, a greater honor to the judiciary of this region than to me personally, for you have never before honored a judge. I am very proud that I am the first and may I express the hope that I won't be the last judge to win this Award.

In a developing country like Malaysia we are dependent on agriculture, fishing and other peasant activities which bring little reward in terms of material things, and our various governments do the right thing by bending their efforts towards fostering and increasing industries and manufactures so that we get more return for our labor and spread the good things of life among more and more of our people. So the emphasis, certainly in my country, has been to produce more and more economists, accountants, bankers, manufacturers; more and more engineers, architects, surveyors; more and more doctors, dentists, scientists, and so on, people whose efforts can result in increasing our bread and butter. Though during the struggle for independence lawyers were most courageous and skillful fighters and were always to the fore, yet after independence, apart from the few lawyer-politicians who man the cabinet and the legislature and the civil service, the importance of the legal profession has been eclipsed by the importance of citizens who fell the forest and till the soil; who build roads, bridges and houses; open and run schools, universities, hospitals, and clinics, and open and run factories, banks, insurance companies, and the like, persons whose efforts visibly increase the GNP and generally help the citizenry to a better and more prosperous life. In Malaysia during the period after independence the legal profession, as such, has occupied a back seat, and its role has never caught the public imagination.

Practising lawyers are themselves to blame for the comparatively insignificant part they are playing during the most formative stage in the history of our developing country. They tend not to see the wood for the trees, and in the endeavor to serve their client's interest they get lost in a jungle of technicalities and forget that the law is also an instrument to be used for the general improvement of the community. The law is not something immutable, something carved on tablets of stone that cannot be changed. The law should serve man, not man the law, though of course man must obey it until it has been changed if we are to avoid anarchy. My philosophy is quite simple: having read in history books that the law can be used as an engine of oppression, we should, on the contrary, determine to use it as an instrument to improve the lot of mankind, as an instrument for bringing about a good and just government in a system whereby it is possible for us to choose the persons who decide our present and future and to change them at periodic intervals through the ballot box rather than the bullet.

Government is responsible for making the law, and governments try to enact just laws, but laws are made to suit the times, and when times change sometimes the law ceases to be just in its application to actual cases. I have always held the view that it is the public duty of every lawyer to bring to the notice of the authorities instances of antiquated laws so that they may be amended and brought up to date, in line with new circumstances and modern ideas of what is and what is not just. This is especially important in a newly independent country.

Having dealt with lawyer-politicians who make the law, and lawyers who practice the law, I now turn to judges. Their role in the courtroom is well known and there is no need for me to say anything about it. Today I would rather talk of the extracurricular activities of a judge. He should eschew partisan politics and not indulge in public controversies. His judgments are often reported in the daily papers, and are accepted for their impartiality. Accordingly, he enjoys a special place in the community, being regarded as fair-minded and not swayed in a multiracial and multi-religious country by racial and religious considerations, being guided simply by what is just. Enjoying the confidence of the public, outside the courtroom he should be ready to perform community functions—serving on a school board, or in any other educational capacity, doing work among young people, serving the Red Cross—and the Government may call upon him to serve on or head a Commission of Enquiry. The last is particularly true of Malaysia where everytime the Opposition demand a public enquiry they always stipulate that it be led by a High Court judge. The judiciary is naturally proud of the confidence shown by the public in our sense of fair play. My attitude has always been to accept whatever assignment is thrust upon me beyond the line of duty, provided that there are no political overtones to the assignment, for nothing harms the judiciary more than being involved, or thought to be involved, in partisan politics. No matter how humble his origin, when a person has become a judge he belongs to a privileged community and it is his privilege to serve the community in any capacity not inconsistent with his judicial office.

I am lucky in having been invited to serve the community outside the courtroom in several capacities. Other Malaysian judges have also been similarly lucky, but I am luckier than all of them, because my activities came to the notice of your trustees with very pleasant results indeed to my wife and me, for it has enabled us to visit your great country and meet so many interesting and wonderful people.