Constitution of Malaysia - Constitutional Amendments - Frequency of Constitutional Amendments

Frequency of Constitutional Amendments

According to constitutional scholar Shad Saleem Faruqi, the Constitution has been amended 42 times over the 48 years since independence as of 2005. However, as several amendments were made each time, he estimates the true number of individual amendments is around 650. He has stated that "there is no doubt" that "the spirit of the original document has been diluted". This sentiment has been echoed by other legal scholars, who argue that important parts of the original Constitution, such as jus soli (right of birth) citizenship, a limitation on the variation of the number of electors in constituencies, and Parliamentary control of emergency powers have been so modified or altered by amendments that "the present Federal Constitution bears only a superficial resemblance to its original model". It has been estimated that between 1957 and 2003, "almost thirty articles have been added and repealed" as a consequence of the frequent amendments.

However another constitutional scholar, Prof. Abdul Aziz Bari, takes a different view. In his book “The Malaysian Constitution: A Critical Introduction” he said that “Admittedly, whether the frequency of amendments is necessarily a bad thing is difficult to say,” because “Amendments are something that are difficult to avoid especially if a constitution is more of a working document than a brief statement of principles.”

Technical versus Fundamental Amendments

Taking into account the contrasting views of the two Constitutional scholars, it is submitted that for an informed debate about whether the frequency and number of amendments represent a systematic legislative disregard of the spirit of the Constitution, one must distinguish between changes that are technical and those that are fundamental and be aware that the Malaysian Constitution is a much longer document than other constitutions that it is often benchmarked against for number of amendments made. For example the US Constitution has less than five thousand words whereas the Malaysian Constitution with its many schedules contains more than 60,000 words, making it more than 12 times longer than the US constitution. This is so because the Malaysian Constitution lays downs very detailed provisions governing micro issues such as revenue from toddy shops, the number of High Court judges and the amount of federal grants to states. It is not surprising therefore that over the decades changes needed to be made to keep pace with the growth of the nation and changing circumstance, such as increasing the number of judges (due to growth in population and economic activity) and the amount of federal capitation grants to each State (due to inflation). For example, on capitation grants alone, the Constitution has been amended on three occasions, in 1977, 1993 and most recently in 2002, to increase federal capitation grants to the States.

Furthermore, a very substantial number of amendments were necessitated by territorial changes such as the admission of Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak, which required a total of 118 individual amendments (via the Malaysia Act 1963) and the creation of Federal Territories. All in all, the actual number of Constitutional amendments that touched on fundamental issues is only a small fraction of the total.