KOTA KINABALU: Former Parti Warisan assemblymen who defected after the September 2020 snap state polls have claimed that they did not sign any bond with the party prior to being election candidates.
Sindumin assemblyman Datuk Dr Yusof Yacob when contacted said there were no bonds signed with the party.
He said this when asked to comment on Warisan’s plan to re-look its "contract" signed between the party and them.
This comes after the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s decision to order former PKR vice president Datuk Zuraida Kamaruddin to pay RM10mil for a breach of bond when she left PKR during the 2020 Sheraton Move.
"There was no bond," said Yusof, who left Warisan last year and is now a member of Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah (Gagasan Rakyat).
Another former Warisan assemblyman Norazlinah Arif (Kunak) also said that she did not have any bond agreement with Warisan.
"We should look into the details of the agreement between Zuraida and PKR, it was a bond.
"We do not have any bonds," said Norazlinah, who joined Gagasan Rakyat led by Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor in February this year.
"I believe the Zuraida case does not affect our decision," she added.
A total of 11 out of 23 Warisan assemblymen have defected since the 2020 state election. All have thrown their support to the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) government.
Parti Warisan secretary general Datuk Loretto Padua had said that the decision to have a fresh look at the contracts came following the KL High Court ruling.
He said they also wanted to study the grounds of the judgment before making any decision against the assemblymen who defected from the party.
He said they have not got the grounds of the (High Court) decision and will look at it from a different angle this time.
“We will go through the grounds of decision first then decide,” Padua added.
In June 2022, Kota Kinabalu High Court judge Justice Wong Siong Tung declared that the undated and unsigned resignation letters were unlawful.
In passing the judgment, Justice Wong said that an elected representative should be able to act on his own independent judgment and should not be legally constrained by the party or the electorate.
He said the combination of undated signed resignation letters and pledges of loyalty to Warisan prior to the 2020 state elections equalled an unlawful scheme.
He said an elected member of the legislature should be free to act according to the best of his or her ability and his independent judgment should not be legally constrained by obligations to his party or to the electorate or subject to be dictated by anybody.
“Any arrangement that fetters or deprives such freedom of elected members of the legislature will be contrary to public policy and is unlawful,” Justice Wong said.
He added that any cause of action based on such an arrangement to deprive such freedom cannot be sustained in law.
