KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 30 — The High Court has today dismissed an application to commence judicial review filed by three Barisan Nasional (BN) members to quash the Home Ministry's approval in allowing Umno’s additional motion to exempt its top two posts from being contested at the party elections.
Malaysiakini reported that High Court judge Datuk Amarjeet Singh denied the trio's bid during open proceedings earlier, ruling that the courts have no jurisdiction to hear cases involving internal matters of a political party as per Section 18 of the Societies Act.
The members — Satarriah Abdul Karim and Zaidi Abdul Majid of the Umno Lembah Pantai branch; and P Vellasamy of the MIC Lembah Pantai branch — had filed a bid before the High Court to challenge home minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail’s decision allowing the top two posts in Umno to be uncontested at the recent party polls.
At the 2022 Umno annual general assembly on January 14 this year, the party approved a motion for the post of president and deputy president not to be contested at the party elections.
They said on March 2, the Registrar of Societies (RoS) director-general issued a letter to the Umno secretary-general, saying that the no-contest resolution was irregular and contrary to Article 9.3 of the party constitution, therefore the resolution was deemed invalid.
According to them, RoS directed Umno to take corrective action to comply with Article 9.3 of the party constitution.
However, on March 7, they said Saifuddin issued a statement saying that the ministry had decided to grant an exemption to Umno under Section 70 of the Societies Act from complying with Section 13(1)(c)(iv) of the same Act.
Satarriah, Zaidi and Vellasamy claimed Saifuddin Nasution’s decision contravene Article 8(1) of the Federal Constitution on equality, adding that it had denied other members the chance of challenging the incumbents for the post of president and deputy president.
Besides Saifuddin Nasution, they have also named Umno and RoS in their legal challenge.
