Kuala Lumpur: A Sarawak NGO declared unlawful last year on the grounds of being "a threat to national security" filed for judicial review in a Kuching High Court Tuesday against Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's order.The Sarawak Association for People's Aspiration (Sapa), described by founder Lina Soo as a group of "housewives and retired civil servants", disclosed that the application for leave to hear the review is on February 9. Soo, Hugh Lawrence Zehnder and Tibram Pilang, in filing the judicial review on behalf of Sapa, named the Home Minister, the director of the Registrar of Societies and the Malaysian government as respondents.Soo said the ban was against the democratic freedom of speech and right to association; denied them natural justice of the right to be heard; was irrational, an abuse and an unreasonable exercise of discretionary power and was unconstitutional and procedurally improper.
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Zahid in declaring Sapa an unlawful society under Section 5 of the Societies Act 1966 on November 14, said Sapa was being used for purposes prejudicial to the interests of the security of Malaysia and public order. The NGO at the time was on a campaign to collect information to prove the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 – the agreement that led to the formation of Malaysia – was invalid. Sapa had in August also written to the United Nations to seek the world body's assistance "to review the arbitrary and indecorous surrender" of Sarawak's sovereignty by the United Kingdom to the federation of Malaysia".
It said the "surrender", which was sanctioned by the United Nations, was done "without (the) exercise of the right to self-determination in contravention of the spirit and letter of the United Nations and Decolonization Declaration adopted by the General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) of December 14, 1960".The letter, addressed to the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon and the United Nations Human Rights Committee, was handed over to the UN office in Kuala Lumpur. Sapa's legal counsel Dominique Ng said the Sapa ban was a serious matter of public interest as it struck "at the very tenets of democracy and fundamental civil liberties – freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of association – which are guaranteed in the Malaysian constitution".
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Ng, the former PKR Sarawak chief and former assemblyman for Padungan, added that Sapa had always conducted its activities within the ambit of its constitution as a legally constituted organisation."And yet Sapa has been denied the natural justice of the right to be heard as in the principle of 'audi alteram partem' (a Latin phrase that roughly means 'hear the other side too') and that the order to ban Sapa is irrational, an abuse and unreasonable exercise of discretionary power, unconstitutional and procedurally improper," Ng said.
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Under legal rules, Soo had three months to file the application. Earlier, the Penang government filed an application for a judicial review against Zahid's declaration that the voluntary patrol unit was illegal.The state government named Zahid, the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar and the Federal government as respondents.
