MB vs MB: 3-member panel hears appeal
Hafiz Yatim | May 21, 09 9:32am
Pakatan Rakyat's Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin will not be getting a five-member panel to hear his application at the Court of Appeal today.
It is learnt that his letter to request the five-member panel did not reach the Court of Appeal president Alauddin Md Sheriff on time.
His application before the court today is to set aside the stay of execution order obtained by his rival Zambry Abd Kadir against a High Court ruling which had declared Nizar as the legitimate menteri besar of Perak.
However, the court will first hear Zambry's appeal proper today.
The three-member panel that will be hearing the matter are justices Md Raus Sharif, Zainun Ali and Ahmad Maarop.
This legal battle between Nizar and Zambry is largely seen by many as the final judicial attempt by either party to stamp their authority as the rightful and legitimate Perak menteri besar.
The Kuala Lumpur High Court had on May 11 ruled that Nizar was the lawful menteri besar as the state assembly had not moved for a vote of no-confidence to remove him.
The following day however Zambry filed an appeal and obtained a stay order from Court of Appeal judge Ramly Ali who had sat as a single judge.
Following this, Nizar had filed his own application to set aside the stay order granted to Zambry.
He had also requested that the matter to be heard by a five-member Court of Appeal panel instead of the usual three, as it was a matter of public interest and touched on constitutional issues.
High Court judge had erred
The appeallate court is expected to take some days of hearing to make a ruling on both the matters before it.
This morning, the parties agreed that Zambry's appeal will be heard first.
The hearing started with Zambry's counsel Cecil Abraham (photo) making his submission at about 9.45am.
He argued that High Court judge Ramly had not given proper weight to the documentary evidence produced before him on the legality of Zambry's appointment.
The lawyer added that Ramly himself had admitted of only evaluating Nizar's arguments without looking at the documentary evidence namely.
The documentary evidence, he said, had showed that the Sultan of Perak had ordered Nizar to resign which the latter had refused to do so.
Cecil said that the constitutional provision commands that Nizar resigned following the sultan's instruction.
AG: Nizar admitted losing majority
Following Cecil's submission, Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail, who has intervened in the matter to assist the court, started his submissions.
The AG said that Nizar, in his affidavit, had indirectly admitted that he has lost the majority in the state assembly by admitting that there was a deadlock in the assembly with both Pakatan and BN having 28 seats each.
However Abdul Gani said that since speaker V Sivakumar was also part of Pakatan's 28 elected representatives, his position as a speaker would have disallowed him to vote in the vote of no-confidence if it was called.
The speaker can only vote if there was equality in the house, meaning that both BN and Pakatan had equal number of seats, minus the speaker's elected seat.
As such, he said if such a vote was taken, BN would have had 28 seats compared to Pakatan's 27.
Abdul Gani further argued that there were no provisions under the Perak constitution for a menteri besar to be voted out through a vote of no-confidence to show that he had lost the majority in the house.
The AG also adopted Cecil's argument that the High Court judge's adoption of a previously decided case law - the Stephen Kalong Ningkan case - was wrong.
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