Mazu: What the court did not say

Less than 24 hours after he suffered an adverse Court of Appeal verdict, former Sabah Chief Minister Chong Kah Kiat called for a special press conference in Kota Kinabalu yesterday on the aborted Mazu - Goddess of the Sea - statue project in Kudat.

He said he urgently wanted to clear the air following public confusion on what the Appellate Court verdict on Wednesday actually meant in law.

Chong said that "the Appellate Court verdict was more important for what it did not say rather than what it subsequently proceeded to do".

The court, said Chong, did not rule on the legality or otherwise of the project. In essence, the court did not say:

(1) that the Mazu statue project, as approved by the Kudat Town Board, was illegal;

(2) that he cannot build or put up the project as approved by the Kudat Town Board; and

(3) it did not say that the actions of the relevant Sabah state government authorities - the Kudat Town Board, the Permanent Secretary in the State Ministry of Local Government and Housing, the State Secretary and the Chief Minister - in first stopping the project and subsequently cancelling and withdrawing the approval of the project was right and proper.

"The Court merely said that that the Kudat Thean Hou Charitable Foundation was unlawful as it has never been registered under the Society's Act. The Court did say that I had, in consequence, no standing to proceed with the suit and the originating motion," said Chong, a lawyer by profession, warming up to the main issue. "The Court did not say anything else."

No proper avenue for redress

Chong expressed dismay that in striking out his originating motion against the Kudat Town Board and his civil suit, the Court of Appeal had been bogged down by technicalities. It had deprived him of an opportunity to seek redress in a court of law over the stoppage of the project.

The stoppage was preceded 10 days earlier by the infamous Sipadan barge incident which plunged relations between Chief Minister Musa Aman and Chong to a new low.

Chong was then Deputy Chief Minister and State Minister for Tourism, Culture and the Environment. He resigned on April 13, 2007.

"Had I a proper avenue or venue for redress within the state government apparatus after the Mazu statue was halted, I would not have gone to court," said Chong at his Alam Mesra office in the suburbs, opposite the mini Putra Jaya Federal Administrative Complex.

"The Kudat Town Board does not have an appeals board that meets to address issues."

Chong confirmed that he had instructed his counsel, Ansari Abdullah, to apply for leave to the Federal Court to file a notice of appeal against the decision of the Appeals Court to strike out his civil suit against the Chief Minister and three other defendants, and an originating motion against the Kudat Town Board.

The Court of Appeal, according to Ansari ( right ), has advised that it will only issue a written judgment on its verdict "if there's going to be an appeal", an unusual procedure according to the legal fraternity.

"If the Federal Court finds for me, we will be back to the High Court and the Mazu cases will proceed," said Chong, expressing his confidence that the Malaysian legal system will maintain the right to redress.

"If I don't go to the Federal Court, the defendants do not have to explain anything at all or even account for their actions and they can get away scott-free with the exercise of absolute power which does not exist. Is this what we want in this country?"

"If the Federal Court upholds the Court of Appeals verdict, it will be the end of the road legally for me and leave me without any redress against government interference. I will have to look at other options."

One option, according to Chong, is to put together the huge granite pieces of the Mazu statue, as a tourist icon, and leave it lying on its proposed site next to the Marina Resort.

"The Chief Minister is against a Mazu standing up," noted Chong. "But there is nothing to prevent it from lying on the ground. We will put up a signboard to inform the tourists that the statue was not allowed to be positioned standing up. Or, we will just leave the huge pieces lying around on the site. Again, there is no law against that."

'Najib very objective'

"Many states in Peninsular Malaysia are also willing to take my statue pieces, put it together and have the Goddess standing up."

The final option, according to Chong, "will depend on divine instructions from the Goddess."

Chong disclosed that he briefed Prime Minister Najib ( left ), "who is very objective", on the Mazu project on July 22 but "he's bogged down by so many problems in Peninsular Malaysia".

Revisiting familiar grounds, Chong stressed that four documents are important in deciding the Mazu issue; a letter of approval dated Feb 8, 2006 from the Kudat Town Board; a letter from the Kudat Town Board dated May 25, 2006, addressed to him, advising him to "stop work on the statue until further agreement and instructions from the Chief Minister"; a June 6, 2006 letter advising him that the approval for the project had been cancelled and withdrawn because it was "too close to a mosque - more than 700 metres away - and there were objections from people"; a Nov 15, 2007 letter advising him that he had been found to be "in breach of Section 15 of the Town and Country Planning Ordinance because the plans were not considered by the Central Planning Board".

"The May 25, 2006 letter is evidence of the state government interfering in a private project on private land, financed by private funds. There are legal implications. All these are in black and white and we cannot run away from them," said Chong.

"They clearly demonstrate that I had standing in law but unfortunately the Court of Appeal did not allow us to address the issue. We hope to remedy that.

"If I had no standing in law, the state government would not have addressed me and by name. They should not have addressed me at all in that case."

Chong further contended that the state government should have taken the "gentlemanly approach' and maintained in court that the actions that they took in the stoppage of the project was lawful. Instead, its statement of defence did not reflect that, and "out of the blue" it brought up the issue of locus standi which had never been mentioned before during all the months in court.

The former Sabah Chief Minister also disclosed that he plans to bring out a book soon in various languages on the Mazu saga in the state as a reminder to the people that "the constitution cannot be taken for granted".

The book will be on sale to both tourists to the Mazu site and others.