PETALING JAYA: The federal government has gone to the Court of Appeal to set aside a High Court decision allowing the Sabah Law Society (SLS) leave to seek judicial review in relation to a 40% special grant for Sabah.
SLS president Roger Chin said the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), which is representing the government, has also applied to the Kota Kinabalu High Court for a stay to stop it from hearing the merits of the case.
“We were also informed of the appeal and the stay proceeding by the AGC last month,” Chin said.
He said the High Court had instructed the parties to file submissions on the stay application.
On Nov 11, the High Court granted SLS’s application on the grounds that it had locus standi to file for a judicial review as this was a public interest case.
According to Chin, Justice Ismail Brahim also said SLS’s case was for the breach of Putrajaya’s constitutional duty to pay the 40% entitlement for the “lost years” between 1974 to 2021, which was a justiciable matter.
SLS had filed the leave application in June last year following an April 14 announcement by the federal and state governments of a special five-year annual grant of RM125.6 million for Sabah.
The Sabah government subsequently applied and was also allowed to intervene as a respondent in the action.
Tengku Ahmad Fuad, the Sabah’s government’s counsel, said the judicial review seeks redress for the federal government’s failure to conduct a review of Sabah’s 40% special grant, which is a breach of Articles 112C and 112D of the Federal Constitution.
Senior federal counsel Suzana Atan, however, argued that matters concerning Sabah’s special grant were non-justiciable and could not be brought to court in the event of a dispute.
In its suit, SLS alleged that the federal government had breached the Federal Constitution by failing to conduct a review every five years starting from 1974.
It also claimed that the federal government was obliged to pay Sabah 40% of federal revenues derived from the state in each of the intervening years since 1974.
David Fung and Jayen Marimuthu represented SLS.
