Senior federal counsels for EC, Suzana Atan and Shamsul Bolhassan, told the High Court that the voters should have exhausted all efforts under Regulation 20 of the Elections (Registration of Electors) Regulation before coming to court.
The Regulation states that aggrevied parties can write an appeal to EC’s adjucating officer if they are not happy with any previous decision made by the Registrar.
“They have filed their appeals and it should be heard first in the inquiry,” Suzana said, referring to the voters’ appeal against the EC registrar’s decision on not wanting to hear their objections on the army voters in an army camp that is still under construction.
However, lawyer Gobind Singh, representing the 48 voters, argued that there are exceptional circumstances in this case that warrant the voters to bring their complaints to the court.
“The voters have a valid complaint, that is, they were not given their rights to be heard.
“They even presented the Parliament Hansard in which the deputy defence minister had mentioned the Segamat camp, but the registrar did not consider it,” he said.
The Hansard contained a part of parliamentary proceedings where the Deputy Defence Minister Johari Baharom admitted that the construction of the Segamat camp had not been completed.
Justice Azizah Nawawi fixed Jan 8 to decide on the EC’s preliminary objection.
Last month, the Segamat voters, lead by Abdul Wahab Hassan sought to quash the names of 949 army men and their spouses as new voters in a yet-to-be completed army camp.
They want a court order that the exercise to include the army voters was unconstitutional, as the army personnel and their families were not residing in the constituency.
In an affidavit in support of their application, the voters claimed the entry of names on the Segamat electoral rolls was illegal as it ran foul of Article 119 of the Federal Constitution.
They said many irregularities were discovered during a public inquiry when the EC conducted an open hearing between Dec 4 and 10 last year. The registrar, however, dismissed their complaints after the inquiry.
DAP had previously questioned the move to transfer the army men and whether they were done to “save” the parliamentary seat from falling into the opposition’s hands in GE14.
In the 2013 general election, MIC president Dr S Subramaniam defeated PKR’s Dr Chua Jui Meng with only a 1,217 majority.
Voters go to court over addition of 949 soldiers, spouses, in Segamat seat
DAP claims EC acted unfairly during Segamat objection hearing