Nizar to seek leave from Federal Court by this week

By Deborah Loh
thenutgraph.com

PETALING JAYA, 8 June 2009: Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin hopes to file for leave from the Federal Court to appeal against the Court of Appeals' judgement declaring rival Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir as the lawful Perak menteri besar (MB) within the week.

The embattled MB won't be applying for leave today as he had earlier hoped to. This is because his lawyers only received the written judgement from Court of Appeal judge Datuk Md Raus Shariff last Friday, 5 June, Nizar said yesterday on the sidelines of the PAS muktamar in Shah Alam which he attended.

One of his lawyers, Edmund Bon, today confirmed with The Nut Graph via text message that the application for leave would not be filed today.

Nizar said his lawyers would have to study the written judgement in order to formulate the grounds for appeal before being able to apply for leave from the Federal Court.

"We still hope to file as soon as possible," he said.

Nizar last week said he would ask his lawyers to proceed with applying for leave today even without the written judgement. He said that Md Raus had not kept his promise to issue the judgement seven days after the Court of Appeals' decision on 22 May. However, the written judgement was issued three days after the seven days.

After the Court of Appeals gave its oral judgement on 22 May, Nizar's lawyer Sulaiman Abdullah had asked the court to expedite the written judgement so that the grounds of appeal could be formulated for the Federal Court to consider.

Cases moving from the Court of Appeals to the higher court do not get automatic right of appeal.

The three Court of Appeal judges on 22 May unanimously ruled that Perak Ruler Sultan Azlan Shah was right in finding that Nizar had lost the confidence of the majority of state legislators, and that a vote of no-confidence in the assembly was not necessary to determine this.

The appellate court set aside the judgement of the High Court on 11 May that Nizar was the legitimate MB, and that a no-confidence motion in the legislative assembly was the only way to decide if he had the majority's confidence.