Court sets July 24 to decide if Tian Chua can keep Batu

The Election Court has set July 24 to determine whether an election petition brought by Gerakan Youth secretary-general Dominic Lau for the parliamentary seat of Batu will be struck out.

Justice Zabariah Mohd Yusoff set the date at the Jalan Duta Court Complex today after listening to the preliminary objections from all parties.

PKR vice-president Tian Chua, whose real name is Chua Tian Chang, won the Batu parliamentary seat in the May 5 general election after defeating Lau by a 13,284-vote majority.

Lau’s (left) petition named Tian Chua as the first respondent while returning officer Mustafa Mohd Nor and Election Commission (EC) were named as the second and third respondents.

Tian Chua’s counsel Edmond Bon presented a total of 10 grounds for the preliminary objection against the election petition, a large part of which revolved around the technicality of a valid petition.

Among the objections include the petitioner’s appointment of a solicitor firm to file the petition when according to election rules, Bon argued, required the petitioner himself or an appointed individual advocate to file the petition.

Furthermore, Bon had also argued that the petition must be personally delivered by the petitioner and that the date of advance voting was absent from the petition.

“Our preliminary objections are based on case law... where the administrative efficacy or difficulty do not arise. Election petition rules are so strict that these concerns do not apply,” he said.

‘Petitioner’s objection dismissed’

Counsel Hafarizam Harun, who represented Lau, had earlier also raised preliminary objections to the first respondent’s preliminary objections over, among others, the admissibility of an affidavit.

However, the objection was dismissed by Justice Zabariah with costs of RM5,000.

Senior federal counsel Amarjit Singh, who represented the EC and its returning officer, did not file any preliminary objection.

“On the point of law, the election petition complied with election rules based on Article 48 (1)(e) of the federal constitution,” he said.

Article 48(1)(e) of the federal constitution states that a person is disqualified from being an MP if he is fined not less than RM2,000 or jailed for a term of not less than a year.

Tian Chua was in 2009 sentenced to six months’ jail and fined RM3,000 by a magistrate’s court for causing hurt to a police officer.

The sentence was later reduced to a RM2,000 fine by the High Court after an appeal.

‘Sentence interpretation’

Among the grounds for Lau’s petition is that the returning officer had failed to reject Tian Chua’s nomination papers despite the latter having been fined RM2,000.

In 1975, former Kampar MP Fan Yew Teng was disqualified as MP after being fined RM2,000 and sentenced to six months’ jail for sedition.

In contrast, the then Supreme Court had in a 1993 decision interpreted  that “not less than five years” in law, meant “more than five years”.

This has led to a question of interpretation and Lau has sought the Federal Court’s interpretation of Article 48(1)(e) of the federal constitution.

The decision on the striking-out of the petition will be delivered at the Jalan Duta Court Complex on Wednesday at 1pm.