Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat (right) and Court of Appeal President Tan Sri Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim (left) at the Opening of the Legal Year in Putrajaya on Wednesday. Tengku Maimun, the first female chief justice in Malaysia, is expected to retire in July this year, when she attains the mandatory retirement age of 66, unless her tenure is extended for six months. (Photos by Shahrill Basri/The Edge)

PUTRAJAYA (Jan 8): In what is possibly her final speech at the Opening of the Legal Year, Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat said that her time as the top judicial officer of the country has been filled with tests — being criticised, vilified, labelled as un-Islamic or an enemy of Islam, and even having her husband (unfairly so) being used against her in some applications to not only have her recused but, more generally, to embarrass her and the bench.

“None of them have or ever will pass the test of my conscience, and praise be to Allah, I have not once lost sleep over these comments,” she said on Wednesday.

While she did not mention the cases for which she has been criticised or vilified, it is thought that the chief justice was most likely referring to former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s final SRC International Sdn Bhd appeal, where she presided over the bench that upheld Najib’s conviction and sentence, instead of recusing herself.

Tengku Maimun also led a nine-member bench in Nik Elin Zurina Nik Abdul Rashid's challenge over 18 Kelantan shariah enactments, where Tengku Maimun was in the majority, in striking out those provisions on the grounds that they ran contrary to the Federal Penal Code.

Referring to Nik Elin’s case in her speech on Wednesday, Tengku Maimun said that the decision resulted in her being painted as being anti-Islam, with some critics even questioning her faith as a Muslim.

“I wake up every day praying and hoping that the Most Beneficent and Most Merciful Allah SWT accepts my ibadah and deeds. It is not for me to question the faith of others, because in the first place, I will never know, until the Day of Reckoning, whether Allah SWT has accepted my own.

“And so, I will not bring myself to stoop down to the level of these scurrilous attacks, and instead, my only response to them is this one rhetorical question: For those of you who have the time to question the faith of others, are you confident enough that Allah as the sole judge, has accepted your own ibadah and deeds, such that you have now been ordained the standing to question mine and of others?” she said.

The Opening of the Legal Year on Wednesday.

In her parting speech, Tengku Maimun reminisced on the difficulty and obstacles of her six years as the chief justice, saying she had served under four prime ministers from different political parties, from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim presently.

“During this time, judicial panels led by me have made what we firmly believed to be correct decisions on the law and facts, regardless of the heated political overtones and undertones that clothed some of these cases.

“This alone should dispel any baseless notion that I have ever been partial to any particular prime minister or any political party,” she added.

Tengku Maimun, the first female chief justice in Malaysia, is expected to retire in July this year, when she attains the mandatory retirement age of 66, unless her tenure is extended for six months.