I was thinking about what happened in KL on Sunday – a lot. I can’t get over how bloody minded the government and public service in Malaysia are. So last night, I telephoned and spoke to CMS, an ex-boss, who is the senior partner of the firm I was in. I wanted to reach out and extend the camaraderie and express my disbelief over the behaviour of the government.They tried to oppose bail for Edmund. This is outrageous and clearly demonstrates how the AG or DPP continues to be anything but independent of the ruling party. Where is the objectivity? On the one hand, bail was granted for a murder accused. Razak Baginda was charged with murder in a very high profile case and they allowed him to roam free on bail. On the other hand, Edmund Bon has to contest the might of the AG or DPP to get bail, in what is at best a misdemeanour. It enraged me. I went home last night, seething. I complained to Theresa and kiddo, a lot. They are thankful I’m not in KL now. I would have been easily inclined to jump in. The fact that my legal work has been almost entirely within the banking/corporate (and now insurance) areas does not mean I have no inclination to react to issues of human rights and administration of criminal justice. All lawyers should react to this in the strongest possible manner.Justice and fairness must be the bedrock of any effective legal administration system. You can be the flashest corporate lawyer and be a whizz kid in terms of the intricacies of structuring complex corporate finance deals, appreciating every aspect of the legal risks associated with every feature of the deal. If you have a Mickey Mouse judiciary such as the one bedevilling Malaysia, you might as well write an “i. o. u” on a napkin of a coffee shop and a handshake. No whizz-bang-you-beauty suite of contracts is going to save you from a corrupt and clueless bench.The demonstrations against the administration are therefore well justified. For far too long, the executive branch of the government in Malaysia has been playing fast and loose with the judiciary, twirling the sad little judges around the fingers of the Prime Minister, business leaders and even lawyers. What sort of integrity does can this sort of judiciary have? The lawyers’ march was wrong only in terms of timing – they should have done this years ago.