The Court of Appeal has ruled that all court documents must be filed in the national language, because the supremacy of Bahasa Malaysia is enshrined in the federal constitution.

NONE Justice Abdul Malek Ishak, who on Oct 20 had dismissed Anwar Ibrahim's appeal in his RM100 million defamation suit against former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, said the courts are required to strictly enforce the procedure.

In his 31-page written judgment made available today, the judge said failure to satisfy the ruling would result in applications being dismissed.

Anwar's lawyers had filed the memorandum of appeal in English rather than use the normal procedure of filing it in Bahasa Malaysia and English.

His lawyers then sought an extension of time to file the necessary documents when Mahathir's application to strike out the suit was heard, but this too was rejected.

"We have seen the memorandum and it is obvious it is not drafted in Bahasa Malaysia," Abdul Malek said.

"The failure to do so amounts to blatant breach that would compel us to conclude that no memorandum has been filed at all."

Anwar, he said, should have filed the memorandum of appeal in the national language as "no other language will be entertained".

palace of justice istana kehakiman "This is ordained in the laws of this country. The filing of the memorandum of appeal in the English language constituted an injustice to the respondent (Mahathir) and it was a pure and simple abuse of the process of the court," the judge said.

"Article 152 of the constitution, read together with the National Language Act, states all proceedings other than the giving of evidence shall be in the national language.

“The purported memorandum in English must accordingly be rejected outright. What is mandatory, must be strictly adhered to. Otherwise dire consequences will follow.”

Abdul Malik said the failure of Anwar's counsel to file the memorandum in Bahasa Malaysia had rendered the purported record of appeal useless.

“It is our judgment there is no proper or competent appeal before us. Furthermore, the Rules of the Court of Appeal 1994 state that, if the memorandum is not drawn up in the prescribed manner, the appeal may be dismissed.

“To add insult, the memorandum in English was not signed by Anwar's lawyers and not dated, rendering the memorandum invalid and to be defective and invalid.”

Deficiencies not rectified

The judge also found that, as early as between Aug 20 and Aug 22, 2007, Anwar's lawyers had been alerted to this deficiency by Mahathir's lawyers and to their proposed course of action.

“Hence there was ample opportunity for the appellant's counsel to rectify the appeal record. For the whole year of 2008, the counsel remained idle.

“In our judgment, Mahathir's counsel did not ambush Anwar's lawyers with respect to the striking-out application. The filing (to strike out) was done without any malice afterthought.”

He noted that everything seems to go wrong for Anwar and that “flagrant breaches of rules seem to be a hallmark of his case”.

“It is rather unfortunate but the law must be strictly adhered to,” he added.

mahathir and suhakam 050905 In January 2006, Anwar had sued Mahathir for RM100 million over allegedly defamatory remarks the latter had made on the sidelines of a Suhakam conference four months earlier.

In July 2007, the Kuala Lumpur High Court struck out the suit without hearing the merits of the case, leading to an appeal being filed.

On Oct 20 this year, a three-member bench of the Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the appeal and ordered Anwar to pay costs.

Sitting with Abdul Malek were Justice Azhar Ma'ah and newly-elevated judge Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad.

Anwar was represented by lawyer Karpal Singh and SN Nair, while Mahathir was represented by VK Lingam.