OMBUDSMEN

State reasons for the need of ombudsmen

First, to avoid abuse or misuse of power by administration.
As we know, administration have ben vested with many powers in exercising
their duty.
There are possibilities and opportunities of abuse or misuse of power by them
which will result in maladministration and corruption.
Thus, there is a need of an adequate and effective mechanism to face such
danger.
This can be done by controlling administration in exercising their power
through ombudsmen.

Secondly, Courts role as a control mechanism of administrative administration is not
sufficient.
Even though Court scope of judicial preview is evolving, as a matter of fact,
some aspects still fall outside the scope of judicial preview of the Court.
In other word, they do not provide for a complete review of the administrative
field.
For example, Court did not look into departmental files and government
enjoys special privileges in litigation. Hence harder to secure evidence on the
issues involved and consequently it is even more difficult for them to exercise
their already limited judicial review.

Lastly, judicial proceedings are dilatory, formal and costly.
Court fees have to be paid and lawyers have to be engaged to prosecute
individual grievances.
This causes many refuse to seek judicial redress of their grievances against
the administration.



Explain whether public complain BIRO can be consider as ombudsmen as a
system of ombudsmen in Malaysia.
Even though, public complain BIRO do have a certain essence of an
ombudsmen system, it cannot be regarded as ombudsmen as a system of
ombudsmen in Malaysia.
First, BIRO lacks the autonomy and independence of the Ombudsmen.
It has no legal power to investigate into the alleged cases of maladministration
or to enforce its recommendations due to the fact that they are part of the
Executive.
Furthermore, in exercising the functions, it depends entirely on the co-
operation of the various government departments and agencies.

Next, it is difficult to be made certain on the effectiveness of the BIRO in redressing
grievances of the people against the administration except on the obvious fact that it
is part of the Executive
However, being part of an Executive, it has no access to Parliament and does
not send its reports to Parliament.
Hence, the BIRO may be of some help but cannot be regarded as efficacious
as an Ombudsmen to deal with the public grievances against the
administration.

Lastly, in the first place, the creation of the BIRO was not intended to be a system of
ombudsmen in Malaysia, but only as a complaint handling mechanism.
This is due to the fact that Ombudsmen system has been effective only in
unitary-type state where powers are centralized and in countries with long and
deep parliamentary traditions.
In Malaysia, we have a multi-racial society having acute racial sensitivities.
The rational of such refusal to adopt system of ombudsmen is the existing
potential of politic and racial exploitation arising from consistent and extensive
publicity on activity of an Ombudsmen.
In a nutshell, public complain BIRO cannot be consider as ombudsmen as a system
of ombudsmen in Malaysia