KOTA KINABALU — The Federal Court has dismissed the Attorney General’s bid to appeal the Sabah Law Society’s (SLS) judicial review regarding Sabah’s entitlement to 40% of federal grant revenue.
A three-judge panel led by Justice Nallini Pathmanathan, with Justices Zabariah Mohd Yusof and Rhodzariah Bujang, delivered the decision yesterday.
With this, SLS’s case will proceed to a full trial at the high court here at a future date.
The judges said SLS has the threshold locus standi to file the judicial review application, and thus saw no necessity for the grant of leav
“This is particularly so as the issue of substantive locus standi may, if necessary, be considered in the course of the substantive judicial review on the merits,” they said.
In the matter of justiciability, the panel said the judgment of the Court of Appeal is comprehensive and sets out the position clearly, and as such, the judges see no reason to warrant the grant of leave.
“We reiterate that at the leave stage, the court is concerned primarily with threshold locus standi and non-justiciability in the present case is not apparent on a prima facie construction of the cause papers.
“This matter deals with whether the failure to review and provide Sabah’s Special Grant amounts to a breach of the relevant Articles of the Federal Constitution, and for prayers to remedy the same,” they said.
Therefore, the grant of leave is not warranted, and the judges requested that the matter proceed to be heard on its substantive merits.
On June 18, the Court of Appeal here dismissed the federal government’s appeal against the leave granted to SLS to seek a judicial review of the state’s 40% revenue grant.
The federal government was appealing against the Kota Kinabalu High Court’s decision on Nov 11, 2022, to grant the SLS leave to seek a judicial review of the matter to compel the return of 40 per cent of federal revenue earned from the state according to the Federal Constitution.
On Nov 11, 2022, Justice Ismail Brahim granted SLS’s application for leave for the judicial review, ruling that the SLS had locus standi for judicial review as it was a public interest litigation.
The Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) obtained a stay order to stop the High Court from hearing the merits of the case pending the appeal.
The SLS filed the judicial review application in 2022 to overturn the federal government’s gazette of a RM125.6 million annual grant for Sabah, claiming that it violated the state’s revenue rights under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63). — October 18, 2024