A three-member bench led by Justice Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim refused the body of lawyers leave to appeal a Court of Appeal ruling handed down last year.
“The applicant has failed to meet the threshold requirement under Section 96 of the Courts of Judicature Act. As such, the six leave questions are dismissed with no order to costs,” he said.
To succeed, the Bar was required to satisfy the court that the appeal would involve novel constitutional or legal questions of public importance raised for the first time.
Abang Iskandar, who sat with Justices Rhodzariah Bujang and Nordin Hassan, said the Bar had also failed to address the appeal’s prospects of success should leave be granted.
“They did not address the prima facie prospects of success in their affidavit or in oral submissions,” he said.
Senior federal counsel Rahazlan Affandi Abdul Rahim and Liew Horng Bin appeared for the government and former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, while lawyers Steven Thiru, Abdul Rashid Ismail, Gregory Das and Henna Nikita Sanghvi acted for the Bar.
On Nov 28, a three-member Court of Appeal bench dismissed the Bar’s appeal to refer constitutional questions to the apex court on the validity of the emergency proclamation.
Justice Azizul Adnan Azmi, who delivered the broad grounds of judgment, said the bench was bound by an earlier decision by another panel of the same court on Oct 12, 2022, disallowing a similar appeal by Bersih.
The appeals court also noted that both the appeal before it and a parallel one filed by Bersih emanated from the same High Court judgment, but were heard separately by two different panels.
The appeals stemmed from a decision by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on May 18, 2022. Justice Ahmad Kamal Shahid dismissed applications filed by both the Bar and Bersih to refer a total of 34 constitutional questions to the Federal Court for determination.
Kamal said he would instead hear and decide on all legal questions posed in both applications himself.
The Bar had raised 27 questions of law with regard to the validity of the proclamation made under the Emergency Ordinance, while Bersih’s application posed another seven questions.
The emergency proclamation, issued to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic which began in early 2020, took effect from Jan 12 to Aug 1, 2021.
Following today’s decision, Kamal will proceed to hear the Bar and Bersih’s originating summons filed in 2021.
A case management has been fixed on June 24.