DAP will challenge Friday’s disqualification of their Pujut assemblyman, Dr Ting Tiong Choon from the Sarawak state legislative assembly.

The party state leadership have decided to take the case to court and “test new legal waters” after a meeting at its headquarters in Kuching on Friday night.

The 51-year-old Dr Ting, a medical doctor who was elected to the Chinese-majority seat in the oil town of Miri in last year’s state election, was disqualified because he was once an Australian citizen.

The disqualification is the first for any lawmaker in the country.

Ting got the boot over an Article 17 (1)(g) of the Sarawak state constitution which states that “a person is disqualified from being an elected member of the Dewan Undangan Negeri (the state legislative assembly) if he has voluntarily acquired citizenship of, or exercised rights of citizenship in, or has made declaration of allegiance to any country outside the Federation (of Malaysia)”.

Ting, who then had been living in Australia for 20 years and with his family, accepted an Australian citizenship in 2010.

“The party feels we need to challenge what happened in the DUN yesterday (Friday),” he told The Malaysian Insight just before taking a flight back to Miri.

He said the party felt there was “something very wrong with it” and would therefore “like to see how the court will interpret it (the disqualification)”.

“This is new thing to everyone.

 “We don’t know what the law actually says [on Article 17 (1)(g)] or whether the DUN can disqualify a member just like that.”

On Friday, DAP state chief Chong Chieng Jen told reporters at the state assembly that “they are studying the possibility of mounting a legal challenge”.

During Friday’s debate, Chong had argued that the proper forum to hear the disqualification is the court, and not the legislature where BN hold more than a two-thirds majority in the 81-seat assembly.

BN have 71 seats with DAP having seven, including Ting’s Pujut, and PKR’s three.

“Let the more independent body decide on whether he has breached the constitutional provision and not by the brute majority of the House to bulldoze the motion through.

Seventy legislators voted for the motion to disqualify Dr Ting during last Friday’s Sarawak assembly while 10 voted against. The motion was tabled by Minister for International Trade and E-Commerce, Wong Soon Koh.

Sarawak Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg, who was not in the House, did not cast his vote. – May 14, 2017.