Court allows challenge on registration of Segamat army camp voters

The High Court in Kuala Lumpur has granted leave for 48 Segamat voters to proceed with their judicial review challenge on the inclusion of 949 army voters in the constituency.

Justice Azizah Nawawi, who made the ruling in chambers, also issued a stay in the gazetting of 949 army personnel as voters.

This came after the judge turned down the preliminary objection on the judicial review application.

The voters are seeking to quash a local inquiry’s decision to reject their application to ban 949 army personnel and their spouses from being registered as voters in the third quarter of the 2017 electoral roll.

The ruling was made based on Regulation 20(4) of the Election (Registration of Electors) Regulations, which stipulates that a court cannot review the decision of an appeal to objections to voter registration, according to the applicant's lawyer Joanne Chua.

"The judge said that since the provision states that the decision is not reviewable by the court, hence that amounts to special circumstance for this judicial review to be continued," she said on what transpired in chambers. 

According to Chua, senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan, appearing for the Election Commission, argued that applicants can only resort to a law suit after the current process is completed.

The court set Jan 16 for case management.

The 48 voters, aged between 32 and 74, had filed a judicial review application on Dec 14, 2017, to challenge the registration of army voters when the Segamat Army Camp, which will only be completed by April 2018.

The local voters had initially filed an objection with EC at a local inquiry held in December last year but were overruled.

Theirr appeal to the EC was also rejected during a hearing conducted last week.

In their judicial review application, the voters sought to quash the EC's local inquiry decision.

They want the entry of the 949 names into the electoral roll to be declared unconstitutional besides seeking costs and any other order deemed fit by the court.

DAP Mengkibol state assemblyperson Tan Hong Pin described today's decision as a minor victory for the voters as they lost twice at the EC's local inquiry.

Meanwhile, DAP Jementah state assemblyperson Tan Chen Choon said the entry of 1,217 voters into Segamat would affect the outcome of the next poll results for the seat as BN only won by a majority of 1,207 votes in the 2013 general election.- Mkini