PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal (COA) has allowed the government's bid to overturn a landmark ruling which said that children born overseas to Malaysian mothers with foreign spouses were entitled to Malaysian citizenship.
The highly anticipated decision was delivered by a three-men bench chaired by Datuk Kamaludin Md Said, much to the dismay of Malaysian women impacted by the issue of their children's citizenship status just because of their foreign spouses.
The other judges on the bench were justices Datuk S Nantha Balan and Datuk Azizah Nawawi.
Kamaluddin and Azizah were in the majority, while Nantha dissented.
The two judges ruled that the word "father" in the Second Schedule of Part 11 of the Federal Constitution meant the biological father and cannot be extended to include the mother or parents.
Kamaludin and Azizah said it was up to Parliament, not the court, to rewrite the constitution.
However, Nantha said Article 14, which allowed children outside the federation to obtain citizenship, was discriminatory as it violated the equality provision.
He added that the present legal status of the mother's bloodline was made to look inferior to the father.
The denial of citizenship, he said, also went against international law of which Malaysia was a party to.
It was previously reported that the Kuala Lumpur High Court had ruled that the government must confer citizenship to children born overseas to Malaysian mothers with foreign spouses.
Prior to the landmark High Court decision last year, overseas children born to Malaysian fathers were allowed to apply for Malaysian citizenship, but this did not apply to Malaysian mothers.
Judge Datuk Akhtar Tahir, in his judgment, ruled the word "father" in Article 14(1)(b) of the Federal Constitution must be read together with Article 8(2) to include mothers and that their children were entitled to citizenship by operation of law.
Article 8(2) stipulates that there shall be no discrimination against citizens on the ground only of religion, race, descent, place of birth or gender in any law or in the appointment to any office or employment under a public authority, while Article 14 concerns citizenship by operation of the law.
The decision was made by Akhtar in the case brought by Malaysian mothers whose children were born overseas and not able to get citizenship here.
The ruling came about after non-governmental organisation Family Support & Welfare Selangor & Kuala Lumpur (Family Frontiers), along with six other Malaysian mothers, filed the judicial challenge and named the Malaysian government as respondent.
However, the government filed an appeal against the High Court decision after arguing that the judge had erred in deciding that Article 8 also applied to citizenship sought by Malaysian mothers whose children are born overseas.
Senior federal counsel Liew Horng Bin had argued that the word "father" in the Constitution was not meant to include "mother".
He said it was not considered discriminatory when the Constitution was drafted in 1959.