KOTA KINABALU: The Election Court here has set April 8 to hear the election petition for the Kimanis parliamentary seat won by former foreign minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman during GE14.
Justice Lee Heng Cheong also set March 8 to decide whether all ballot papers can be checked along with Forms 13 and 14 in the tallying of the results for the Kimanis seat.
Justice Lee set the dates in chambers when the case brought by Parti Warisan Sabah candidate Datuk Karim Bujang, who lost the seat in GE14, came up for case management on Friday (March 1).
He was represented by Frederick Chang Tyn Chi and Syaiful Sidin.
Anifah was represented by Ansari Abdullah and Rizwandean M. Borhan while the Election Commission was represented by lawyers Faizal Sarbi and Abdul Fikri Jaafar.
Chang later told reporters on Friday (March 1) that Justice Lee had set the trial to start on April 8 and the case would be spread over six sittings that will go on until June.
“There are a lot of matters that we need to go through," he said, adding that they will be bringing witnesses and tendering exhibits when the hearing starts.
On June 18, Karim filed an election petition to challenge the election results in which Anifah won with a 156 vote majority after he garnered 11,942 votes against Karim’s 11,786 votes.
However, the High Court threw out the petition last Oct 16 but the Federal Court then overturned the decision and remitted it back to the court for trial.
Warisan had claimed that there were elements of manipulation by the Barisan Nasional camp in the May 9 polls and had also claimed that the ballot papers were counted at least four times.
Earlier on Friday, the High Court postponed the mention of the Sipitang parliamentary seat election petition against the win of Barisan’s Yamani Hafez Musa to March 8.
His counsel Azhier Farhan Arisin said that the new date was set as the judge had a personal emergency.
The case management will be on March 8 and a date will be fixed for trial then.
The petition was filed by Warisan candidate Noor Hayaty Mustapha to nullify the results of the Sipitang parliamentary seat won by Yamani, who is also the son of former chief minister Tan Sri Musa Aman and Anifah's nephew.
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