This comes after the Federal Court today unanimously rejected the federal attorney-general’s application for leave to appeal concurrent rulings by the High Court and the Court of Appeal granting SLS leave to pursue the application.
The apex court rejected four questions of law drawn up by the attorney-general in his bid to secure leave to overturn the rulings of the courts below.
A three-member bench chaired by Justice Nallini Pathmanathan today said SLS has legal standing to bring the present claim.
“This is even more so as we are dealing with threshold locus standi in judicial review,” said Nallini, who sat with Justices Zabariah Yusof and Rhodzariah Bujang.
The court, however, ruled that the locus standi issue can be revisited, if necessary, when the judicial review application is heard on its merits.
Lawyers David Fung and Jeyam TM Marimuthu appeared for SLS, while senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan and Ahmad Hanir Hambaly represented the attorney-general.
In April, a three-member Court of Appeal panel led by Justice P Ravinthran affirmed a High Court ruling granting SLS leave. The court said it was not persuaded by the attorney-general’s contention that issues relating to the special grant are non-justiciable and that courts are precluded from hearing the case.
Also on the panel hearing that appeal were Justices Nazlan Ghazali and Choo Kah Sing.
Ravinthran had said that SLS, a statutory body set up to represent Sabah lawyers, was not seeking personal redress over the 40% special grant issue but was bringing the case in the form of public interest litigation for the benefit of all Sabahans.
The court noted that the focus of SLS’s judicial review centred on the federal government’s alleged omission to review Sabah’s entitlement under the special grant between 1974 and 2021.
A review conducted in 2022 purportedly does not account for the so-called “lost years”, Ravinthran had said.
SLS is seeking to quash a 2022 gazette stating that the federal government will make grant payments to Sabah totalling RM527.2 million covering the years 2022 to 2026.
It also wants to compel the federal government to hold another review under Article 112D of the constitution to properly reflect Sabah’s 40% net revenue entitlement.
It argued that a review was carried out from 1969 to 1973, but not since then. As a result, it said, Sabahans had lost the benefit of the special grant for 47 years.
The federal government had contended that the value of the grant should be determined by both federal and state administrations, taking into account fiscal and financial positions.
On Nov 11, 2022, the High Court granted SLS leave to pursue the judicial review. Justice Ismail Brahim said the lawyers’ body had locus standi to bring the action as it was a public interest case.
His decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal.