FEBRUARY 24 — Two institutional reform Bills are finally here.

Let’s take a cursory glance at the second Bill.

The Bill to amend the Federal Constitution for the separate appointment of a Public Prosecutor (PP) has been tabled for its first reading in the Dewan Rakyat.

The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2026 (DR 5/2026) proposes to insert a new Article 145A to appoint a PP and another new Article 145B to provide for the powers and duties of the PP.

In May last year, when the government seemed to be going nyet, nyet, nyet — again to borrow the expressions of former economy minister Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli — over separating the roles of the Attorney General (AG) and PP, I suggested that the Federal Constitution be amended by adding a new Article 145A for the appointment of a PP with consequential amendments to Article 145 (on Attorney General).

The proposed Article 145A was as follows:

(1) The Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall, on the advice of the Prime Minister, appoint a person who is qualified to be a judge of the Federal Court to be the Public Prosecutor for the Federation.

(2) It shall be the duty of the Public Prosecutor to discharge the functions conferred on him by or under this Constitution or any other written law.

(3) The Public Prosecutor shall have power, exercisable at his discretion, to institute, conduct or discontinue any proceedings for an offence, other than proceedings before a Syariah court, a native court or a court-martial.

(4) Federal law may confer on the Public Prosecutor power to determine the courts in which or the venue at which any proceedings which he has power under Clause (2) to institute shall be instituted or to which such proceedings shall be transferred.

The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2026 has a more elaborate proposed Article 145A, with sub-clause (1) a standout provision. It reads as follows:

The Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall in his discretion, on the recommendation of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission and after consultation with the Conference of Rulers, appoint a person qualified under Clause (2) to be the Public Prosecutor for the Federation.

The provision above will remove the prime minister from having a role in the appointment of the PP.

It is now hard – if not very hard – to say that the Madani government has no reform-DNAs.

But the more elaborate Article 145A, together with Article 145B (on powers and duties of PP) — compared to my proposed Article 145A — brings to mind what Sir Geoffrey Bowman, who served as a First Parliamentary Counsel (head of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel responsible for drafting all government bills introduced to the Parliament of the United Kingdom), wrote exactly 20 years ago:

“If five drafters were set on the same Bill, each might emerge with a different product. It is true that there would normally be little of substance that differed between the drafts. And we would rarely feel that a colleague’s efforts were plain wrong. But we might well say, ‘I would not have done it that way’.

“Now, if five different drafters would produce five different Bills, it suggests that legislative drafting is an art rather than a precise science.” (“The Art of Legislative Drafting”)

Indeed, legislative drafting is more an art than a precise science.

Hats off to the drafters of the two Bills (not one but two) to amend the Federal Constitution.

*This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.