Anwar fails to stay Sodomy II appeal, hearing goes ahead tomorrow
Tarani Palani, fz.com
Hearing of the government’s appeal over Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s acquittal in his second sodomy case will proceed tomorrow after an unsuccessful attempt by the opposition leader to postpone proceedings.
The Federal Court this afternoon dismissed Anwar’s third appeal to the apex court to disqualify Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah from leading the prosecution team.
With this, an application to stay the Sodomy II appeal proceedings was also squashed, and the hearing will go ahead tomorrow.
Justice Tan Sri Abdull Hamid Embong, who headed a five-member panel, ruled that there were no exceptional circumstances or merits to grant a stay.
“There are no merits in the grounds cited by Anwar in the stay application,” he said.
Anwar’s lead counsel, Karpal Singh, had argued that Anwar should be allowed to exhaust all avenues in his appeal to disqualify Shafee before the government’s appeal is heard.
Shafee submitted today that due to a lack of merit, Anwar’s application was “doomed to fail”.
He also submitted that as the Court of Appeal had already ruled on Monday that this was a vexation of the court process, to allow today’s application would be a waste of the court’s time.
The matter was heard after Karpal met Chief Justice Tan Sri Ariffin Zakaria this afternoon.
Anwar is appealing the Court of Appeal’s dismissal on Monday of his application to disqualify Shafee on two new grounds, the first of which is that the lawyer is not a “fit and proper” person to lead the prosecution as he had breached a publicity rule over a newspaper article and fined RM RM5000 under the Legal Profession Act 1976.
The second grounds relate to Shafee’s role as the head of the Suhakam panel which in 2009 found one of Sodomy II key witnesses, former police officer Jude Pereira, to be an untruthful witness.
On Monday, Datuk Balia Yusof Wahi, leading a three-member bench, agreed with Shafee’s submission that Anwar’s application was made to delay the government’s Sodomy II appeal and that it is an “abuse of (court) process”.
“(The proceedings are moving) slowly through the maze of the corridor of the court in a very snail pace,” he had said.
The Court of Appeal ruled that it cannot decide on whether Shafee is “fit and proper” to serve as a deputy public prosecutor in the Sodomy II Appeal as only the public prosecutor (attorney-general) had jurisdiction over the matter as provided for by the Federal Constitution.
