KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 10): Prominent senior lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah has thrown his name in the hat in a bid for a seat in the Bar Council for the next term.
Shafee is the 25th candidate out of a record 39 candidates vying for 16 seats in the Bar Council for the 2024/2025 term.
It is very possible that Shafee could be eyeing the top post — the Bar Council president.
The Bar Council president will be elected from among the 16 people voted into the Bar Council at the Malaysian Bar’s next annual general meeting (AGM) in March 2024.
Shafee has had a rocky relationship with the Bar as he previously was a member for the 2006/2009 term.
Shafee is among Malaysia’s most high-profile lawyers. Currently and notably, he is the defence lawyer in former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s SRC International Sdn Bhd and 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) cases. He also represented Samirah Muzaffar in the Cradle Fund CEO murder case, as well as Abdul Razak Baginda in the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder case, among others.
In recent times, Shafee has successfully won a suit against the Malaysian Bar where the Federal Court ruled that the Bar had breached its statutory duty to Shafee. This is due to the Bar’s acceptance and subsequent publishing of a motion to censure the senior lawyer who had held roadshows in early 2015 about then opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s conviction for Sodomy II.
The motion was supposed to be debated during the Malaysian Bar's AGM in March 2015 but was stopped from being presented in the AGM due to an injunction obtained by Shafee.
Shafee claimed that the Malaysian Bar had breached its statutory duty in acting on the motion by publishing it and putting it on the agenda for the AGM, before lodging a complaint with the disciplinary board.
The Federal Court ruled that these actions may have prejudiced Shafee’s case in the disciplinary proceedings and allowed the appeal.