Court strikes out ex-Sabah CM's bid to stop judiciary RCI

Former Sabah chief minister Yong Teck Lee’s suit to stop the government from setting up a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) to investigate allegations of judicial misconduct has been dismissed by the High Court in Kota Kinabalu.

The suit was found to be untenable by judge Ismail Berahim, who ruled that it was based on pure conjecture and speculation.

Yong was also ordered by the court to pay the government RM3,000 in costs in the ruling delivered by the judge yesterday, as reported by Free Malaysia Today.

Senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan said the judge accepted the arguments put forward by the government. 

The government had last month applied to strike out the suit, saying that Yong did not have the legal standing to prevent the setting up of the RCI.

In the application, it was argued that Yong had given no reasonable cause of action to warrant the reliefs sought and he had failed to demonstrate how he was affected by the decision to set up the RCI.

Yong was represented by lawyers Lawrence Thien and Valery Lim.

Court of Appeal judge Hamid Sultan Abu Backer (above) had first highlighted these allegations of judicial misconduct in an affidavit on Feb 14, where he had, among others, alleged interference in a 2016 Court of Appeal majority decision to uphold the late Karpal Singh's conviction for sedition.

Despite the government announcing in February that an RCI would be established to probe Hamid's allegations of widespread corruption and abuses in the judiciary, it has yet to materialise.

Early last month, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad indicated that the RCI would “start work soon," as he shot down a former judge's proposal for the government to hold an internal inquiry instead.

Sources from Pakatan Harapan previously told Malaysiakini that there were parties within the coalition, as well as retired top judges, who opposed the RCI for fear of "unfavourable" truths being revealed.