National Auctioneers granted bid to challenge e-lelong system

The High Court in Kuala Lumpur today has granted leave (permission) for the Malaysian Auctioneers Council to initiate judicial review proceedings against the government's proposal to implement the ‘e-lelong’ (electronic auction) system by the court which would make their profession redundant.

Justice Azizah Nawawi granted leave despite a preliminary objection made by senior federal counsel Maisarah Juhari over the application.

The decision was made in her chamber after the judge listened to submissions.

Counsel for the auctioneers Mohd Haniff Khatri Abdulla said the court, however, did not grant a stay on all bidding processes.

"With leave granted, the court will now hear the merits of the case. It has fixed Jan 3 for case management," he said.

In judicial review cases, leave or permission from the court has to be gained before the application is heard on its full merits. This is to ensure the application is not frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the court process.

It was reported last Oct 29, that the Malaysian Auctioneers Council filed a judicial review application where it named the High Court of Malaya registrar as the respondent in the application.

It sought a certiorari order to quash a High Court of Malaya registrar directive dated July 23 this year which wanted to implement the system for auctioning immovable properties.

The auctioneers also want a court declaration that public auctioneers have a right to conduct the auctioning and a stay to suspend the e-lelong system until the disposal of their application, with costs of the action and other reliefs deemed necessary by the court.

The president of the council, Mustafa Osman in an affirmed affidavit said former chief justice Arifin Zakaria announced the proposal for the implementation of the system in 2014 to safeguard purchasers from being cheated.

The e-lelong system, which was implemented last Aug 1, is a real-time online public auction of immovable properties such as landed homes.

Under the system, those interested in bidding for properties can do so online instead of showing up in court to bid, which is the current practice.

Mustafa claimed the proposal was protested by the council as it affects the livelihoods of 1,800 auctioneers and this violates their rights under Article 5(1) to a right to life and have a livelihood.

He further claimed that by the end of 2015, the High Court registrar issued a directive or conditions, that auctioneers should not be more than 60 years old and must pass with a distinction in Bahasa Melayu, Maths and also obtain a pass in English.

As a result of the directive, 1,000 auctioneers lost their jobs when it was implemented on Jan 1, 2016.

Mustafa claimed the purpose for the implementation of the e-lelong system was due to quite a number of them not being registered with the court. He alleged there are auctioneers causing problems, particularly due to the quality of their services, and that the auction process was not done in an orderly manner and this had affected the court's image.

He disagreed with the reasons given, as it is done without basis as there had been no show-cause letters issued to the auctioneers.

The president of the council further claimed the court had acted in bad faith as it had tried to reduce the function of the auctioneers.

As a result, the council filed a memorandum of protest on Feb 10 last year that the switch to e-lelong would affect their livelihoods since the auction had been done manually since 1926, and the implementation of the e-lelong system is against public policy, public interests and would result in online fraud. - Mkini