PARTI Warisan Sabah president Shafie Apdal remains a GE14 candidate, after the Sabah High Court dismissed an application for leave for a judicial review of his status.

Judge Azhahari Kamal Ramli ordered the applicant, Semporna Umno committee member Mohd Ainal Fattah, to pay RM10,000 each to Shafie and the Election Commission, which were named as respondents.

Ainal had filed an application on April 17 to obtain a mandamus order from the court to compel the EC to reject Shafie’s nomination as a candidate for GE14.

The Warisan head is defending his Semporna parliamentary seat.

Ainal also asked for an injunction to stop Shafie’s candidacy, pending the return of RM7.5 billion in allocations that allegedly went missing when Shafie was serving as a rural and regional development minister.

Azhahari said both respondents had not violated any law under the Election Offences Act and deemed the application for review as “frivolous and vexatious”.

Shafie was represented by counsel Douglas Lind and Chung Dun Jiau, while the EC was represented by senior federal counsel Andi Razalijaya Dadi.

“The application could not even justify why there was a need to carry out the judicial review. Besides, (the applicant) did not make any attempt to object to Shafie’s nomination on April 28 on nomination day,” Chung said outside the court.

Shafie was an Umno minister but was sacked from the cabinet in 2015 after criticising caretaker prime minister Najib Razak.

He quit the party the following year to form Warisan, which is leading the opposition’s challenge against Barisan Nasional in Sabah. – May 8, 2018.