dissolves the Legislative Assembly, it places the sultan in a quandary. Whether to
accede to the request of the Menteri Besar for a dissolution of the state legislature
is a matter of discretion. The circumstances here would justify the sultan deciding
to dissolve the state legislature and allowing the final say to the people of Perak.
If the Menteri Besar had chosen neither to resign office nor to request a
dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, a most undesirable situation would have
been re-created and would have unnecessarily drawn the sultan into deciding
whether to dismiss the Menteri Besar. A responsible Menteri would not put the
sultan in such a dilemma, and in the Perak crisis the sultan was spared such a
dilemma. N.H. Chan, a retired Malaysian judge, observed:
After the Sultan has appointed a Menteri Besar under Article 16 ( 2 )(a),
then, has he the executive power to remove him? The answer is definitely
no, because the only executive power left for the Sultan in which he ‘may
act in his discretion’ – after a Menteri Besar has been appointed under
Article 16 ( 2 )(a) – in respect of the Menteri Besar can only be found in
Article 18 ( 2 )(a) and (b). Apart from Article 18 ( 2 )(a) and (b) there is no
other executive power bestowed on the Sultan concerning the position
and status of the Menteri Besar. The Sultan, therefore, has no executive
power under the Perak Constitution to remove a Menteri Besar.^27
Professor Kevin Tan, adjunct professor of the National University of Singapore,
criticised the approach taken by the judges in the Court of Appeal and the Federal
Court:
I could not help but note the willingness with which the Court of Appeal
judges were prepared to overturn a trial judge’s finding of fact. The
recounting of facts went on for pages on end, and lamentably, the Federal
Court did the same thing. Almost half the Federal Court’s judgment was
concerned with how the facts should be read...The Federal Court
castigated the High Court judge for being perverse in refusing to believe
the evidence of the State Legal Advisor and the documentary evidence
before him even though they were not present at the trial.
Reading and re-reading the High Court judgment and those of Raus
Sharif and Zainun Ali JJCA in particular, it is not at all obvious that
Abdul Aziz J had erred, or if he did, erred to such an extent as to be
regarded as ‘perverse’...Unless Abdul Aziz J is openly accused of
bias (which was never argued), then what he did was perfectly legitim-
ate and professional. At least he did not make the mistake of taking
judicial notice of a supposition of his own making, which the Court of
Appeal did. Appellate courts should really confine themselves to
(^27) N.H. Chan, ‘The Federal Court in Nizar v Zambry: a critique’, LoyarBurok website,
19 February 2010 ,http://loyarburok.com/selected-judgments/the-federal-court-in-nizar-v-
zambry-a-critique.