Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Court declares assembly illegal - Malaysian Insider

By Shannon Teoh

IPOH, March 3 — The High Court here has declared this morning’s emergency sitting of the Perak state assembly which was held on a street under a tree illegal.

The court granted the order under Section 44 of the Specific Relief Act after accepting arguments from Barisan Nasional lawyers that the immunity from judicial review stated in the federal constitution was only for proceedings in the state assembly.

Earlier today Perak Speaker V Sivakumar convened an emergency sitting of the state assembly which effectively voted to end the de facto Barisan Nasional (BN) government of Datuk Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir.

The court’s declaration was the latest development on an eventful day in which Perak’s administration was thrown into chaos with both BN and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) questioning the legitimacy of each other’s actions.

The State Secretary had earlier directed the closure of the building which houses the state assembly venue.

This morning, Judicial Commissioner Ridwan Ibrahim had ruled that five lawyers, including constitutional expert Tommy Thomas, had no locus standi to represent the Perak Speaker in court.

He said the Speaker must be represented by the state legal advisor because he is part of the state government.

1 comment:

DatoSeri said...

Judicial branch taking order from executive branch and is meddling into the legilative business to protect UMNO's interests, ensuring its survival.

Effectively, UMNO trashed democracy and constitution manipulating all gvovernment apparatus, turning the country into lawless police state. Shameful and dispicable.