PUTRAJAYA: Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman's legal challenge of the government's decision to stop allocations for his constituency is likely to settled amicably.
His lawyer Lim Wei Jiet told the Federal Court that Syed Saddiq and the government have reached an agreement for a settlement but needed time to fine tune the details.
"We will iron out the mechanism," Lim told a three-judge panel here on Thursday (Nov 5).
Senior Federal Counsel Ahmad Hanir Hambaly @ Arwi, who appeared for the government and the Prime Minister, confirmed this.
Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Justice Azizah Nawawi, who chaired the panel, fixed Dec 7 for case management.
Other judges on the panel were Justices Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali and Collin Lawrence Sequerah.
Syed Saddiq and three Muar voters – Najib Abu Nawar, Mohd Bakirudin Abdullah and Muhamad Fadzly Bisri – were appealing at the Federal Court against a High Court decision on Dec 24, 2024.
The dismissal was affirmed by the Court of Appeal on Oct 27 last year.
Syed Saddiq filed for leave to appeal at the Federal Court, which was granted on March 10.
The MP and the three voters named the Prime Minister and the government as the first and second respondents in their judicial review application at the High Court.
They were seeking a court order to quash the government’s decision to withhold RM500,000 from a total of RM1.7mil that was supposed to be directly channelled to the bank account of the Muar Parliamentary Service Centre for welfare, community well-being and disaster relief programmes.
Additionally, they requested the court to reinstate Syed Saddiq's access to the myKHAS system, which manages the RM2mil development fund for the constituency, and overturn the decision to cancel several projects worth RM230,300 that were approved through the system.
The applicants also challenged the respondents' refusal to approve or allocate any funds to Syed Saddiq, as the MP for Muar, for programmes under the Projek Mesra Rakyat or similar initiatives for the year 2024.
They contend that the respondents violated Syed Saddiq's right to equality as an MP for Muar, as well as the rights of the three other applicants as voters in the constituency, as enshrined under Article 8 of the Federal Constitution.
