LEMBAGA TATATERTIB POLIS DIRAJA MALAYSIA

On the court record

A police disciplinary board whose matters study the duty to give reasons, the constitutional protection of livelihood and the right to be heard under Article 135(2), and the interaction of conviction with discipline.

LEMBAGA TATATERTIB POLIS DIRAJA MALAYSIA (the Royal Malaysia Police Disciplinary Board) appears in the corpus as an appellant and respondent in public-service disciplinary matters, and its appearances go to the review of police dismissals. In Court of Appeal matters the Board, with the Inspector General of Police and the Government, appealed against a High Court decision that had quashed the dismissal of officers on the ground of a failure to provide reasons for the decision. The court considered whether a disciplinary authority has a statutory or constitutional duty to give reasons for its decision, whether the dismissal affected the right to livelihood under Article 5(1) of the Federal Constitution, and the proper scope of Article 135(2) of the Federal Constitution, which guarantees a right to be heard before dismissal.

In a High Court matter connected to police discipline, the court addressed the position of a senior police officer who had been charged with criminal offences, interdicted and suspended, and then convicted and sentenced shortly before compulsory retirement, with the disciplinary proceedings held in abeyance pending the court proceedings. On serving his sentence he enquired about arrears of salary and pension, and was told that the disciplinary proceedings had not been completed. That matter engages the interaction of criminal conviction, disciplinary process and pension entitlement.

For a reader, the cluster is a valuable study of public-service disciplinary law: the duty to give reasons, the constitutional protection of livelihood and the right to be heard under Article 135(2), and the interaction between criminal proceedings and disciplinary action. The Board and other authorities in their official capacity are named as they appear on the record; the individual officers are referred to by their procedural role only. The Board's matters go to the heart of public-service disciplinary law, where the courts balance the authority's power to maintain discipline against the officer's constitutional protections. The duty to give reasons, the right to be heard under Article 135(2), and the interaction between a criminal conviction and the disciplinary and pension consequences that follow, together define the safeguards that attend the dismissal of a public servant.