IPOH, June 17 — The High Court has decided to give Datuk R. Ganesan a month to prepare for the suit filed by his rival V. Sivakumar for the Perak assembly speaker's seat.
Datuk Azhar Mohamed, sent up from Kuala Lumpur to handle the case, met counsel for both parties in his chambers for just 15 minutes before deciding to postpone proceedings to July 17.
Sivakumar, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR)-appointed speaker of the Perak state assembly, filed the suit on May 15 against Ganesan to prevent him from acting as speaker and for damages for injury and embarrassment during the chaotic May 7 sitting where the latter claims he rightfully replaced Sivakumar.
Ganesan today asked for the postponement on three grounds, firstly, the stipulated 14 days to reply to Sivakumar's submission have not lapsed.
Also, in the opinion of his lawyers, the case cannot be heard in the High Court and they will be applying to strike out the case or move it to the Federal Court and lastly, they want a security for costs of RM100,000 to be deposited by the Tronoh assemblyman.
Leong Cheok Keng, one of Sivakumar's lawyers, told The Malaysian Insider that as Ganesan only received the submission by Sivakumar seven days ago, they had no objection to the postponement.
However, he insisted that Sivakumar should not have to put up any surety.
"The surety is usually for a foreigner or someone who is constantly shifting addresses. In this case, he is an assemblyman and the speaker who wants to attend the assembly. The idea of a guarantee that he will not abscond is completely contrary to the motive for filing the suit in the first place," he said.
The case is crucial in resolving the political crisis in the state as it would have to deal with the question of who is the rightful speaker.
Even though Sivakumar's suit refuses to acknowledge that at any material time he was not the speaker, Ganesan will be expected to argue that the manhandling of Sivakumar was done in his capacity as speaker after the Tronoh assemblyman refused to leave his seat.
As such, the court will inevitably have to answer the question of who is the legitimate speaker.
The position of speaker is crucial as he controls assembly proceedings and for Barisan Nasional (BN), it could mean convening an assembly to pass a vote of no confidence in Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin, rendering the expected appeal to the Federal Court over who is the legitimate mentri besar academic. But if PR wins, then it would have achieved one of two decisive conclusions. It means the May 7 assembly was never called into session by Sivakumar.
So unless the controversial "tree assembly" of March 3 is recognised, no sitting has been called for over six months, which is prohibited by the state constitution and may render the current assembly unconstitutional, forcing its dissolution and fresh polls which PR has been calling for since the Feb 5 takeover by BN.
If the tree assembly is valid, it would reinstall Nizar as mentri besar and affirm suspensions of his rival Datuk Seri Zambry Abd Kadir and his six exco, giving PR the majority in a future sitting of the assembly.
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