SARAWAK Assembly Speaker Mohamad Asfia Awang Nassar has dismissed DAP’s call for an emergency assembly sitting to resolve what it calls “a DUN in crisis”.

Asfia said that as he had filed an appeal against the Kuching High Court’s overturning of the disqualification of Pujut assemblyman Dr Ting Tiong Choon as a member of the state assembly on June 17, it would be sub-judice to take the matter out of court.

Afia, named as the first defendant in Ting’s originating summons to overturn his disqualification, filed his notice of appeal on June 19.

“Because it is in the Court of Appeal, you cannot take it out and pass it to the DUN (state assembly).

Moreover, Asfia said, he did not undertand why the opposition would wish to deliberate with the assembly that had been called “an incompetent forum” by the High Court.

“You mutilated and discredited the DUN, plus the Speaker. Why the need to bring it to an incompetent forum?

“It will not happen. This letter will never see the light of day,” he said in response to questions on state DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen’s letter to Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg last Wednesday requesting his representation for an emergency session.

Afia said anyone who expects a chief minister who commands 72 seats to bow to the dictates of the minority the “needs his head to be examined”.

He said Chong’s letter was also “vicious and vitriolic”.

“The proposal in the letter is absurd and idiotic.”

Chong in the letter said the state assembly was in a crisis after the High Court found that the state law-making body had acted unlawfully, a ruling that that had brought “disrepute and shame to the institution of DUN Sarawak”.

Chong said an emergency sitting was needed as the assembly had no authority to appeal the court decision without a resolution passed by the state assembly.

He asked the chief minister to invoke the state assembly’s Standing Order 8 (3) to make representation to the Speaker to give notice for the emergency session.

Chong said the Speaker should also recuse himself from the emergency sitting because he had named the state assembly as one of the defendants in his appeal.

“The Dewan is in crisis? How can the Dewan be in crisis? Seventy-two solid BN YBs (elected assemblymen) are there. 

“It is like a man who shouts ‘fire, fire’ while committing arson.”

“How can you ask the Speaker to issue notice to convene an emergency meeting when you have called the Speaker not the proper person to be the Speaker?”

Afia said he and state International Trade and E-Commerce Minister Wong Soon Koh, the state assembly and the Election Commission might have lost the battle in the High Court, but “we have not lost the war”.

“With the appeal, we want to change the tide of the war.

“Win or lose, we promise a legal battle of such intensity, ferocity in the Court of Appeal that the fight in the High Court will look like a Sunday picnic.” – June 25, 2017.