Attorney-General Mohamed Apandi Ali said he would appeal against yesterday’s Court of Appeal decision that reversed the finding of the High Court.
“Yes, we’ll file an application for leave to appeal the decision to the highest court in the country,” the nation’s chief legal adviser to the government told FMT via Whatsapp.
A three-man bench led by Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat said the state government did not breach the law in setting up the PPS.
In quashing the home minister’s decision on Nov 4, 2014, to declare the PPS an illegal body, the bench unanimously ruled that the PPS was not a society within the meaning of the Societies Act.
The bench also ordered the home minister and the government to return all vests, seals, insignia arms, documents or other objects, irrespective of whether the logo or words belonged to PPS.
The Penang government filed a judicial review application in November 2015 for an order to quash the home minister’s declaration.
It also sought a declaration from the court that PPS had been established legally under the Local Government Act and did not come under the Societies Act.
The PPS was formed by the opposition-led Penang government in 2011 to fight crime and help with voluntary work.
A controversy arose over its work when a 51-year-old man alleged that PPS members had attacked him. The federal government later decided to clamp down on the PPS. It culminated in the arrest of 158 PPS members participating in the state-level Merdeka parade on Esplanade Road on Aug 31, 2014.
Yesterday’s Court of Appeal ruling appears to have affirmed a similar decision by the Kuala Lumpur High Court judge in 2012 in a case involving Bersih 2.0.
In that case, the then presiding judge Rohana Yusof quashed the then home minister Hishammuddin Hussein’s order in 2011 to declare Bersih 2.0 an illegal entity.
Rohana, now elevated to the Court of Appeal,had said the coalition of civil societies known as Bersih 2.0, though not officially registered, could be considered a society under the Societies Act 1966.
“The minister’s order is quashed because Bersih is a lawful society and it was not proven to be a threat to national security, public order and morality,” Rohana had said.
Former Malaysian Bar president and the then Bersih co-chairman, Ambiga Sreenevasan, and 13 of her colleagues in Bersih’s steering committee, had filed for a judicial review seeking to get the government to lift its July 1, 2011, ban against the movement.
Ambiga had then said Bersih 2.0 was set up to represent the legitimate interests and demands of the people for free and fair elections.
Hishammuddin had declared the movement unlawful, citing Section 5 of the Societies Act as investigations had shown that Bersih 2.0 was not a registered organisation and that, he had claimed, it was creating unease among the people.
The government did not appeal the matter.