PETALING JAYA: The sessions court has allowed Parti Kesejahteraan Demokratik Masyarakat (KDM) president Peter Anthony a stay of conviction in his forgery case pending his appeal to the High Court.
Judge Azura Alwi said she allowed the application after going through the affidavits, case laws as well as the written and oral submissions by Peter’s lawyers and the prosecution.
“I am satisfied and have decided to allow the stay of conviction and sentence,” she said in her brief oral ruling.
Peter filed the application in June to stay his conviction to allow him to contest a parliamentary seat in the 15th general election, which must be held by September next year.
On May 26, Azura sentenced him to three years’ jail after finding him guilty of falsifying a letter from the office of Universiti Malaysia Sabah’s (UMS) deputy vice-chancellor for a system maintenance contract work.
The Melalap assemblyman was also fined RM50,000, or 15 months’ jail in default.
However, Azura ordered the bail amount to be raised from RM50,000 to RM80,000 today for him to be free pending his appeal.
“All other bail conditions imposed earlier remain,” she said, adding that the additional RM30,000 must be posted by Wednesday.
Lawyer S Devanandan, who represented Peter, told FMT he believed the judge followed the binding precedent made in Najib Razak’s SRC International case.
Last week, Devanandan had submitted that the former prime minister obtained a stay of sentence and conviction after the High Court found him guilty in July 2020.
“The Court of Appeal affirmed the order (for stay of sentence and conviction) after dismissing his appeal (in the SRC International case),” he said in his submission.
He said it was in Najib’s case that such an order had been made and that there were no similar cases as reported in Malaysian law journals.
Najib, who was convicted on seven charges of power abuse, criminal breach of trust and money laundering involving RM42 million belonging to SRC International, has appealed to the Federal Court.
Peter had only applied for a stay of sentence after his conviction on May 26.
However, he filed an application to stay the conviction on June 3.
Lawyer D Senthinathan, who filed an affidavit in support of Peter’s application, said there were special circumstances to warrant a stay of the conviction.
The lawyer said he feared Peter could be disqualified by a returning officer should he decide to stand in GE15.
The federal and state constitutions state that an MP or assemblyman is disqualified if convicted of an offence and sentenced to a jail term of more than one year and fined more than RM2,000, and if they have not received a “free pardon”.
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