I concur with the views expressed by accountant RK Vengadasalam on the Bar Council's episode regarding 'postal votes' and cannot resist the temptation to say that when all is said and done, seeking judicial interpretation of this term will be a much ado about nothing exercise.

Mind you, the accountant's application of the term 'postal votes' in the situation appears a lot more reasonable and a lot more practical than those of the senior counsel challenging the entire Bar Council's.

Lawyers in Malaysia are already in grave danger of losing their standing, a process engendered by their glaring inability to arrest the rot that ravished the legal system after the summary dismissal of former Lord President Tun Salleh Abas on Aug 8, 1988.

The spectacle of the kangaroo tribunal that followed exacerbated the grotesque insult perpetrated by the then prime minister who was known to have repeated on many an occasion his threat to "hang the lawyers".

Against such a background of socio-political impotency, I would have thought that lawyers would get their act together after a passage of more than 15 years.

Alas, not only have the members of the learned profession been unable to present a brave and united front to our country and our political leadership, they are even bickering among themselves over minutiae and belabouring on the picayune!

What I find particularly disturbing nay reprehensible! is that such a puerile response has manifested itself when larger issues such as police professionalism cry for the attention of all self-respecting members of the learned profession.

May I remind all members of the learned profession that this is certainly the wrong dice to throw when almost every week, we witness custodial deaths, custodial torture and/or corruption occurring to the detriment of the meek rakyat.

Please lawyers, and please judges, discharge your constitutional duty as the defenders of the liberty of the rakyat. Lawyers are not called officers of the court for nothing.

I intend not to indulge in the purposive approach of statutory interpretation, but will leave it to the judiciary to embark on that simple voyage, a voyage that I suspect they will find more than ironical since it has been initiated by their own learned colleagues.