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PM: No judges removed, eight Court of Appeal and 14 High Court judges to be sworn in July 28

PM: No judges removed, eight Court of Appeal and 14 High Court judges to be sworn in July 28

Malay Mail19-07-2025
PERMATANG PAUH, July 19 — Eight newly appointed Court of Appeal judges and 14 High Court judges are scheduled to be sworn in on July 28, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
He said the appointment process had gone through all the necessary stages including the assessment by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), discussions with the Malay Rulers and the consent of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
'Many have asked me why it was not announced earlier. I cannot answer arbitrarily because the process of appointing judges involves the consent of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
'It needs to go through discussions with the Rulers and after it is agreed, it will then be brought back to the Agong for consent,' he said in his speech when launching the Bumiputera Master Plan, Tunas MADANI and JKPSB Housing Project here today.
He stressed that no judges were removed or dismissed as some parties have portrayed, rather the process of selecting new judges must be done carefully and with full respect for the Constitutional Monarchy system. — Bernama
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Yet, what may appear fair in technical terms may be perceived as threatening in historical and emotional terms. Indeed, behind the disagreement over maps lies a deeper asymmetry of perception. For Cambodia, maps are instruments of justice — evidence of colonial wounds and international validation. For Thailand, they are tools of utility — meant to reflect ground realities, not memorialise imperial cartography. When these worldviews collide, diplomacy becomes cartographically constrained, and escalation becomes dangerously probable. This is not the first time borders drawn on paper have spilled into bloodshed. The 2008 clashes over the Preah Vihear temple led to military confrontations, international mediation, and UN involvement. The scars from that episode linger. And now, in 2025, we see history repeat itself — this time not just over temples, but over how to measure the land they sit upon. Therein lies a sobering truth: when two sovereign nations cannot agree on the very tools to define their borders, the prospect of peaceful resolution grows dim. Without consensus on the instruments of demarcation — whether satellite-generated or colonial-derived — negotiations are reduced to parallel monologues. Dialogue becomes doubly difficult when the conceptual foundations are misaligned. What then is the path forward? It is time Asean steps up — not to impose — but to facilitate a technological and diplomatic compromise. Third-party cartographic mediation, perhaps involving neutral institutions like the United Nations or regional geospatial experts, could help develop an integrated digital mapping framework that overlays both scales and projections. A hybrid platform could account for historical maps while reconciling them with modern data. What matters is not to erase history or override sovereignty, but to find common ground in shared facts. The Thai-Cambodian border dispute is not merely a technical disagreement. It is a geopolitical and psychological struggle over history, power, and identity. Until both sides can agree on the most basic of instruments — a map — their path to peace will remain dangerously convoluted. Because in South-east Asia, as this dispute reminds us, even maps can lead to war. And when they do, it is not the lines that bleed — but the people who live along them. *Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is the Director of the Institute of Internationalisation and Asean Studies (IINTAS) at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). He served as a former Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and is a Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar. **This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.

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