PUTRAJAYA: Former Klang member of parliament Charles Santiago and lawyer Dr Syed Iskandar Syed Jaafar Al Mahdzar have failed in their final bid to challenge the dissolution of the previous Parliament last year.
This followed the Federal Court's decision to uphold the dismissal of the duo's originating summon and judicial review to challenge former prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob's advice to the king to dissolve the 14th Parliament in October 2022.
The three-panel judge led by Datuk Nallini Pathmanathan made the decision after hearing lengthy submissions from all parties today.
Nallini, when reading the unanimous decision, said the legal applications were no longer a live issue as the 15th General Election (GE15) concluded last year.
"GE15 is completed, and its entire process is valid and legal. Thus, the application has become academic," she said.
"We also have a new government, and the new Parliament has convened."
Earlier, counsels Datuk Seri Gopal Sri Ram and Datuk Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, who appeared for both respondents, asked the court to issue prospective declarations in some of the legal issues that they highlighted.
Sri Ram argued that the application was not academic as the ruling would put any request made to the king by a future prime minister open to be examined by the court.
Malik said his client was seeking a declaration that Ismail Sabri had acted unreasonably when exercising his power to request the dissolution of Parliament.
"We never sought to injunct the progressing of the election because we recognise to do so is going to be unfair for the court," he said.
The court responded that it could not grant such declarations as the facts in the legal challenge could not be separated from the law.
"It is not possible to divorce the result because the two are undividable," she Nallini.
On Oct 28, High Court judge Datuk Ahmad Kamal Md Shahid dismissed two legal challenges to defer GE15 by stating that Ismail Sabri's power to request for the dissolution of Parliament was also a non-justiciable matter.
In the first case, Kamal dismissed Syed Iskandar's application for a judicial review, in which he claimed Ismail Sabri acted unreasonably when exercising his power to request for the dissolution of Parliament.
The judge later dismissed Santiago's originating summons against Ismail Sabri, the government and the Election Commission to stop GE15 from being held during the monsoon season.