KUALA LUMPUR: The Attorney-General (AG) and the powers that come with the position need to be reviewed to prevent injustices and ensure fairness, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad told the Dewan Rakyat today.
The Langkawi Member of Parliament said the AG must not have both the powers to prosecute and determine if a case is dismissible.
"He (AG) should be limited to only be the prosecutor and not have the power to make judgements saying 'there is no case to charge this and that person'.
"The AG doesn't only formulate the law but he also gets to judge and classify a case as having no merit and therefore, the case can be quickly dropped.
"As we have witnessed, there was a person who had 46 cases but all (46) charges were dropped by the AG who said there was no case," he said, referring to former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Musa Aman's criminal and money-laundering charges.
In June last year, AG Tan Sri Idrus Harun said the withdrawal of the 46 criminal charges against Musa was due to the unattainability of documentary evidence and witnesses vital to the case.
Idrus said the previous decision of former AG Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail was also one of the reasons the corruption and money-laundering charges against Musa were dropped.
Last week, former Dewan Rakyat deputy speaker Datuk Seri Azalina Othman urged the government to separate the powers of the AG and that of a Public Prosecutor (PP).
According to her, the AG and the PP cannot be the same person to ensure transparency and to avoid the perception that the AG is experiencing political pressure at any time.
