Project Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek Sama) urges all MPs, across party lines, to ensure that the Constitution (Amendment) (No 2) Bill 2026 establishes a transparent and meaningful parliamentary process for vetting candidates for the office of public prosecutor.
The strength of this historical reform depends not only on the separation, but on how the public prosecutor is chosen.
The debate around the attorney general-public prosecutor separation has produced a narrative trap that demonises political power in the public prosecutor’s appointment: if the political appointment of the public prosecutor is the problem, then remove it entirely.
Projek Sama argues contrarily that a political appointment is bad only because it is vulnerable to abuse due to three structural flaws, namely:
- Monopoly of power by the prime minister
- Exercise of power in secrecy
- Absence of a credible and legitimate selection process with clear criteria
Under the current bill, the concern is not just about the removal of the PM or cabinet in the appointment process, but whether the proposed amendments eliminate these structural flaws or simply reinforce them.
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Projek Sama argues that without Parliament playing a meaningful role of checks and balancea, we may risk replacing the prime minister’s arbitrary power with the Agong’s and the Judicial and Legal Service Commission’s secretive and non-reviewable power to appoint.
We reiterate that we must reform political accountability, not eliminate it.
If no elected body has any role in who becomes the public prosecutor, the public has no avenue to ask why a particular person was chosen and no one in the appointment chain is electorally answerable for that choice.
Three reform elements we need
The reform we need in the public prosecutor appointment is political power with three positive elements:
- Sharing of the power by multi-party politicians
- Exercise of the power under public scrutiny
- A credible and legitimate selection process with clear criteria
Best practices from Canada and Kenya
We need a multi-layered, transparent process that distributes decisional authority across various institutions, incentivises impartiality and insulates the office from executive patronage.
Within the Commonwealth, we have two good examples – Canada and Kenya – on how such an accountable and credible process may be put in place.
Canada is a parliamentary system with almost 160 years of multi-party democracy (1867-) and a professional and impartial prosecutorial service.
Kenya is a new presidential democracy that had experienced nearly three decades of one-party rule after independence (1964-91), when prosecution was controlled by the executive.
These two countries serve as good references for Malaysia because it has a parliamentary system like Canada’s, but it also endured six decades of one-party rule until 2018 with a highly politicised prosecution until today.
In Canada, Parliament is involved in two stages between the attorney general: first, through a selection committee which includes every parliamentary party and other stakeholders that shortlists three candidates from many choices by the attorney general; and next, a parliamentary select committee that approves or disapproves the final nominee by the attorney general.
In Kenya, the President constitutes a multi-institutional selection panel to advertise the vacancy, conduct interviews and submit three names in ranked choices to the President. The President then nominates the candidate, whose appointment must be approved by Parliament.
Both jurisdictions emphasise high professional standards, requiring candidates to have at least 10 years of legal experience, and further safeguard independence through single, non-renewable fixed terms – seven years in Canada and eight years in Kenya.
Reform must not risk worsening status quo
Projek Sama sees the public prosecutor reform as entailing extremely high stakes and calls upon all parliamentarians to ensure that the reform must improve and not worsen the status quo.
To produce a responsible, accountable and credible public prosecutor, we envision essentially a simple and necessary four-step process that transforms the initial selection process into a collective and public exercise of recommendation power involving Parliament:
- The Judicial and Legal Service Commission acts as the selection panel to nominate candidates for the position of public prosecutor.
- A bipartisan parliamentary special select committee vets the credentials and suitability of nominees and provides recommendations. The select committee’s recommendations are then adopted by the House of Representative through a resolution.
- The commission presents the House of Representatives’ recommendations to the Agong
- The Agong acts on the recommendation and makes that appointment
We have no confidence that the current bill as laid before Parliament on 22 June would produce an accountable and credible public prosecutor, as it reduces parliamentary oversight to a perfunctory and meaningless role.
The provision allows Parliament to give comments, but it does not require the House of Representatives to examine the nominees through a select committee and formally table its recommendations.
Without that structure, parliamentary involvement risks becoming a box-ticking exercise, rather than a genuine scrutiny process.
It also does not require that the name of the nominee be publicly disclosed. A private communication to Parliament behind closed doors defeats the purpose of transparency.
Our call
The bill as tabled on 22 June falls short of substantive reform. Its appointment process merely removes one source of political power and re-allocates it to another that is unelected, reducing Parliament’s proposed oversight to a role so superficial it borders on the purely ceremonial.
Projek Sama calls on the government to close these gaps before the bill is put to debate and voted on. – Projek Sama
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
