A member of the legal team acting for Young Voters Association (Undi18) was quarantined due to close contact with a Covid-19 positive patient.
As a result, the Kuala Lumpur High Court postponed to May 24 today’s initially scheduled hearing of the association’s legal challenge over the delay in implementing the lowering of voting age.
Undi18’s counsel Lim Wei Jiet told Malaysiakini today that the legal team had earlier written to the court informing about the quarantine involving one of their lawyers.
He said they had proposed to the court for the hearing to be conducted online via zoom instead of open-court proceedings.
Initially, the hearing was scheduled to be conducted in open court before judge Ahmad Kamal Md Shahid, with submissions from legal teams acting for Undi18 and the three respondents in the matter.
The three respondents are Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, the Election Commission (EC), and the government of Malaysia.
However, Lim said that the court decided that it would be better to instead postpone the hearing to May 24.
“We wanted an online hearing because one of the lawyers came into close contact with a Covid-19 (patient), but the court could not accommodate (suggestion for online hearing), so it fixed another (hearing) date,” he said.
When asked whether the lawyer in question is one of the members of Undi18’s legal team, Lim confirmed it.
Senior federal counsel from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), Shamsul Bolhassan, represented Muhyiddin and the government.
The initially scheduled hearing was set to see Undi18’s legal team submit their response to the AGC’s preliminary objections against the judicial review leave application.
According to an Undi18 statement, the AGC said in its objections that Undi18's application “is against the spirit of the constitutional amendment whereby all necessary laws and regulations need to be amended before the automatic voter registration (AVR) can be enforced".
Bernama reported Shamsul as saying that they filed a preliminary objection on the grounds that the application brought by the 18 youths (Undi18) was frivolous, vexatious, and premature at this stage because no action has been taken relating to the matter.
On April 2, Undi18 took the government to court over the postponement of the voting age from the current 21 to 18.
The postponement is likely to result in 1.2 million 18- to 20-year-olds unable to vote in the 15th general election if it is called this year.
This is despite the fact that constitutional amendments for it were gazetted into law in 2019.
However later on May 2, Bernama reported Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Parliament and law) Takiyuddin Hassan assuring that the policy would be implemented this year.
He reportedly said the EC was still looking into several matters before finalising the policy and it is expected to be implemented this July, thus enabling Malaysians aged 18 to vote in GE15.
“However, I can’t give an exact timeframe, but definitely within this year. If we can do it this July, we will do it,” he reportedly said.
Besides the 18 youths representing Undi18, another five youths from Sarawak have also recently launched a separate legal action over the same issue. - Mkini
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