Anifah’s bid against poll petition to be decided later
KOTA KINABALU: The Election Court, which yesterday heard a striking out application filed by Kimanis member of parliament Datuk Seri Anifah Aman against an election petition filed by a Parti Warisan Sabah candidate, will deliver its decision on that matter on a date to be fixed later.
After hearing submissions from the counsels for the petitioner as well as the respondents for hours, Justice Supang Lian said she would let the parties know when is the decision date.
The petition, which was filed by Datuk Karim Bujang, 65, on June 18, named Anifah @ Haniff Amman, 65, as the first respondent while the returning officer (RO) and Election Commission (EC) are the second and third respondents respectively.
Anifah then filed the striking out application against Karim's petition, which challenged Anifah's victory in Kimanis during the 14th general election.
In an open court proceedings, lead counsel for Anifah, Hj Ansari Abdullah, stated the grounds for their submission that there was a failure to properly appoint advocates for the petitioner on reason that there was a single letter of appointment for five advocates.
Ansari pointed out that it was their stand that each and every advocate must be appointed separately, and explained that the appointment instrument must be there in time when filed.
He also argued that there was a question of law regarding the payment of deposit, which was allegedly not made by the petitioner nor any of the five advocates but by a stranger in the form of a legal firm, which was a failure to comply with Rule 2 (1) of the Election Petition Rules 1954.
Ansari further contended that there was a non-compliance with Rule 4 of the said Rules 1954 whereby the petitioner had allegedly failed to state the correct dates of the election which was an advanced polling date on May 5 and further polling date on May 9.
He said based on two decided cases, it was mandatory for the actual date of the election to be stated and failure of not stating the date of polling day is fatal.
Ansari also drew the court's attention by saying that they had just filed two days ago an additional submission to deal with Section 38 (1) (a) of the Election Offences Act 1954 after the Sandakan Election Court had on September 18 struck out an election petition by a Warisan candidate against the Sungai Sibuga incumbent.
He submitted that the petitioner for Kimanis had also failed to comply with the said section as the election petition was not presented within 28 days from the alleged corrupt practice allegedly committed by Anifah.
In reply, counsel Rebecca Thong, who acted for Karim, rebutted that under Rule 9 of the Election Petition Rules 1954, there was no prescribed form for notice of appointment of advocate.
She explained that in a decided case, the court had ruled that the notice of appointment shall name the individual advocates, not a “firm of advocate”.
She also submitted that there was no evidence on the deposit payment made by a stranger. In fact the payment was made by her (the counsel) to an ATM at the court.
She emphasized that the deposit was paid by the petitioner's advocate on behalf of the petitioner.
The counsel further rebutted the non-compliance to state the correct dates of the early voting and the election day by submitting that there was no ambiguity and confusion caused to Anifah or to court by stating only the polling date in the petition. The petitioner had complied with Rule 4 (4) of the said Rules 1954.
She further submitted that on the said recent case for Sungai Sibuga, it did not apply to this petition as that section used only applies where an election petition alleged corrupt practice, in particular payment of the money or the act done after the date of the publication of the result gazetted.
Counsel Rizwandean Bukhari M. Borhan and Tengku Fuad Tengku Ahmad also represented Anifah, counsels Raymond Sze Tu, Song Wei Wan, Tiong Jia Yi and Chua Kuan E also represented Karim while counsel Japar Esteban, Muammar Julkarnain, Abdul Fikry Jaafar Abdullah, Shahlan Jufri, Syahrulnizam Salleh and Faizal Sardi represented the RO and EC.