KOTA KINABALU: Four Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) MPs are ready to fight a legal battle over Bersatu’s move to force them to vacate their seats under the anti-hopping law.
Papar MP Datuk Armizan Mohd Ali said he was confident that the Bersatu bid for a judicial review on Dewan Rakyat Speaker’s decision that they need not vacate their seats would be respected by the courts.
Armizan, who is Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Sabah and Sarawak Affairs and Special Duties), reiterated their stand that they were GRS members and had contested on a GRS ticket and not on a Perikatan Nasional platform in the 15th General Election (GE15) last November.
On Jan 16 this year, Speaker Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani had rejected a motion by Bersatu vice-president Datuk Seri Dr Ronald Kiandee that the four GRS seats be vacated.
The other three MPs are Matbali Musa (Sipitang), Khairul Firdaus Akbar Khan (Batu Sapi) and Datuk Jonathan Yasin (Ranau).
Armizan said they had yet to receive the legal notices of Bersatu’s filing of an application in the High Court for a judicial review of the Speaker’s decision.
He added that all four of them would discuss the matter with their legal teams to get advice on further action that should be taken with regard to Bersatu’s court action.
Asked whether Bersatu had the locus standi to challenge the Speaker’s decision, Armizan said the matter should be asked of the party which filed the application in court.
“We need to ask the person who brought it to court.
“We have to respect the country’s judicial system, so if there is a certain party that takes this matter to court, then we have to respect and obey even if it was decided by the Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat before,” he added.
On April 17, Kiandee and Datuk Kapt (Rtd) Muhammad Suhaimi Yahya, in their capacity as public officers of Bersatu, filed an application for a judicial review to overturn the decision of the Speaker that the four parliamentary seats were not to be vacated.
Amirzan claimed that the Bersatu leadership’s decision to go to the courts did not surprise him as Bersatu did not want a local-based party to gain ground in Sabah.
He said Kiandee, who is Sabah Bersatu chief, contested as the Bersatu Beluran candidate for Perikatan.
“Kiandee should ask himself why he contested on the Perikatan ticket, and why we contested on the GRS ticket. Are they the same or different?
“That is one of the things that I think needs to be clarified,” he said, without elaborating.
In GE15, all four former Bersatu candidates contested using the GRS ticket.
However, all of them were fired from Bersatu on Dec 21, 2022, and remain GRS MPs.
