KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 12 — Lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah today declined to reveal if his imprisoned client Datuk Seri Najib Razak will seek the Prison Department’s permission to campaign in the 15th general election (GE15) or attempt to be a candidate.
Asked how former Pekan MP Najib might be a candidate in GE15, Shafee declined to say directly.
“I don’t want to touch on this because there are a lot of interesting developments, there’s a lot of interesting arguments, I do not want to make in public, I want to keep it to my chest first, when I execute it then you will know,” he told reporters at a press conference at the court complex here.
But constitutional lawyers previously told Malay Mail that Najib is immediately disqualified from becoming an election candidate following the Federal Court’s upholding of his conviction and 12-year jail term and RM210 million fine on August 23, due to Article 48(5) of the Federal Constitution.
Under the Federal Constitution’s Article 48(5), a person is “immediately” disqualified from being nominated, elected or appointed to be a federal lawmaker in either the Dewan Rakyat or Dewan Negara, upon the person’s conviction and sentencing to a minimum one-year prison term or a minimum fine of RM2,000 and when no free pardon has been received.
Najib had on September 2 applied for a royal pardon but has yet to receive any pardon.
When asked if Najib will try to apply to the prison authorities to be allowed out from Kajang Prison to go help with election campaigns in GE15, Shafee again refused to say, replying: “That is opening my chest which I just closed it for a while.”
When it was pointed out that the Prison Director-General Datuk Nordin Muhammad said yesterday Najib will not be allowed out of prison to campaign in GE15, Shafee continued to give coy hints.
Shafee was referring to Najib’s September application to be allowed out of prison to attend Parliament as Pekan MP, which had cited Section 31 of the Prison Act which gives the prison commissioner-general power to order a prisoner to be taken to any place in Malaysia if there are reasonable grounds requiring the prisoner’s presence.
Najib on October 5 filed a lawsuit to challenge the prisons’ rejection of his bid to go to Parliament, but he is now no longer an MP after Parliament was dissolved on October 10. The High Court has fixed October 19 to hear the leave for Najib’s judicial review application to decide whether it will proceed to hear the lawsuit.
“I think the D-G was talking about the usual state of affairs in the prison, what we have applied as you know, I don’t do normal or usual things, I do extraordinary things. And with the application of Datuk Seri Najib to attend Parliament, we have invoked Section 31 which was never invoked before, never, not even Datuk Seri Najib, so that is something which I do not want to go beyond,” he said.
When asked to confirm that Najib has yet to apply to the Prisons Department to be allowed to go out to campaign, Shafee merely replied “I can’t say yet.”
When pressed further to confirm if Najib has or has not made such an application yet, Shafee only said: “No, I can’t say. You ask me 10 times, I will say the same thing.”
Najib has been a prisoner since August 23, which means today is his 51st day in prison.
Apart from seeking a royal pardon or to be forgiven in the SRC International Sdn Bhd case which landed him in prison, Najib had also on September 6 filed an application to ask the Federal Court to review its decision to uphold his SRC conviction and 12-year jail term and RM210 million fine.
When asked if Najib intends to have UK lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw represent him in the bid for the review of the SRC International conviction, Shafee indicated he would most probably handle it himself but is consulting others in order to be better prepared to argue the case.
“Most probably not, but I’m getting advice from several King’s Counsel,” Shafee told reporters today.
Asked if this was related to his recent trip to Australia to meet King’s Counsel Geoffrey Robertson, Shafee said: “I’m not saying, you will know later on.”
Shafee confirmed that he would be most likely handling the SRC review bid himself “but with the assistance or opinion of many others”.
But when asked if he meant with the assistance of many other King’s Counsel, Shafee replied: “No, I have said I have consulted many King’s Counsel, leave it at that without mentioning names.”
The High Court had on July 21 rejected Laidlaw’s bid to enter Malaysia to practise as a lawyer with the ultimate aim of representing Najib in the SRC case, while Shafee’s law firm had on August 22 helped Laidlaw file an appeal directly to the Federal Court.
The application for leave to review is currently scheduled for case management at the Federal Court on October 21, while the Federal Court has scheduled November 8 for the bid to bring the UK-based Laidlaw in to practise as a lawyer in Malaysia.
Shafee said Najib’s lawyers are pursuing the appeal against Laidlaw’s failed bid to enter Malaysia as a lawyer, as he claimed that Laidlaw is easily the “best” lawyer in the Commonwealth or in the world for fraud, corruption and commercial crime.
For the review process at the Federal Court, the Federal Court would first decide whether to grant leave, and the review will only be heard on its merits if leave is granted.
Shafee said that the review application can result in two outcomes if the Federal Court decides in Najib’s favour on the merits of the application, which is to either acquit Najib totally or to order for the appeal to be reheard by a new panel of judges at the Federal Court.
If the Federal Court ever decides to rehear Najib’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s upholding of his SRC conviction, Shafee said this means that Najib would go back to “square one” — where he had previously obtained a stay of conviction from the Court of Appeal.
“So we should go back to square one and therefore he should walk out of the prison so he can challenge the appeal while he is at liberty,” Shafee said.
Shafee explained that if there is such a rehearing of appeal at the Federal Court, it would only then that Laidlaw would be relevant or be involved in representing Najib for the appeal.
