KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Bar is mulling legal action against police for disallowing a peaceful protest march to Parliament on Friday (June 17), says chairman Karen Cheah.

       "We will gather the evidence, video recordings and also speak to some lawyers on what transpired at the gathering before seeking legal counsel on the next course of action.

       "The action will be on constitutional breaches by the police in denying us the right to hold the peaceful protest," she said at a press conference on Friday.

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       She said that under the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012, there was no need for the Bar to get police permission to hold the gathering or protest march except to give the police notice.

       She said that the required notice was given to police on June 7 but the police only got back to the Bar on June 16.

       Cheah said the reply given by the police in their written response to the Bar noted that the denial was due to Covid-19 preventive measures.

       However, she said the Covid-19 negative list has since been abolished and there were no longer any restrictions to holding a procession.

       "During negotiations with the police during the gathering, we asked the reason for denying us the right to walk.

       "We were told one word, 'security' without any further explanation why we were not allowed to march to Parliament," she said.

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       She also questioned why lawyers from Sabah were allowed to hold a peaceful protest march while lawyers here were denied this right.

       The Malaysian Bar had organised "The Walk For Judicial Independence" in Padang Merbok at 10am on Friday.

       However, attempts to hold a peaceful march to Parliament to hand over a memorandum to the government were denied by the police.

       Instead, Deputy Minister in charge of Parliament and Law Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin arrived at Padang Merbok to accept the memorandum from Cheah.

       On May 27, the Malaysian Bar voted to hold a peaceful protest to uphold judicial independence and to also condemn the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) investigation against Court of Appeal judge Datuk Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali.

       The decision to hold the peaceful protest came after an overwhelming majority of the lawyers agreed to the gathering and walk during the Bar's recent extraordinary general meeting (EGM).

       The MACC investigations followed claims by blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddinthat that there were funds transferred to Mohd Nazlan's account during his time as the group general counsel and company secretary of Maybank.

       Mohd Nazlan was the judge who convicted former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak over the misappropriation of RM42mil of SRC International Sdn Bhd funds.

       Mohd Nazlan lodged a police report against Raja Petra on April 21, denying the accusations, which he said were malicious, baseless and aimed at tarnishing his credibility as a judge.