Apex court to hear Syed Saddiq's bid for judicial review on Muar allocations

 

The Federal Court has agreed to hear arguments on why Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman and a group of his constituents should be granted leave to challenge the government’s decision to withdraw constituency funds from elected representatives.

Free Malaysia Today reported that a three-member panel at the apex court led by justice Nordin Hassan found that the plaintiffs had raised three questions that crossed the threshold under Section 96 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964.

Hence, the court unanimously granted them leave to appeal a Court of Appeal ruling on Oct 27 last year, which had upheld a High Court decision that Syed Saddiq’s application was “time-barred”.

According to the report, the questions include whether a denial or withdrawal of constituency allocation is subject to judicial review, and whether such a withdrawal violates the principle of equality under Article 8(1) of the Federal Constitution. The Federal Court will also determine whether the application was indeed time-barred.

Apart from Nordin, other judges on the bench were Lee Swee Seng and Collin Lawrence Sequerah. Other plaintiffs in the case are Najib Abu Nawar, Bakirudin Abdullah, and Fadzly Bisri.

The plaintiffs were represented by Lim Wei Jiet, Joshua Wu, and Nevyn Vinosh Venudran, while senior federal counsel Nurhafizza Azizan appeared for the prime minister and the government.

The plaintiffs filed the judicial review against Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the government in May 2024 in a bid to overturn an alleged decision to cancel RM730,300 for his parliamentary constituency.

Syed Saddiq claimed that the alleged decision came right after Muda decided to pull out of the unity government and was not reinstated despite having met Deputy Prime Minister II Fadillah Yusof several times to discuss the matter.

In a ruling on Dec 24, 2024, the Kuala Lumpur High Court dismissed his application for leave to challenge the government decision as it was not filed within the stipulated three-month period required by law.

It also ruled that matters of allocation are an executive matter outside the court’s purview.

The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision on Oct 27 last year. - Mkini