Justice Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh said the application by Syed Saddiq and the three Muar voters for leave to commence judicial review was filed out of time.
The court acknowledged that since September 2023, Syed Saddiq had been “blocked” from accessing MyKhas – a website for MPs to apply for allocations for community projects in their constituencies.
This came after he withdrew support for the government.
At the end of March this year, he issued a letter to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the government as an “ultimatum” on the matter, but did not receive a response.
“I assume the applicant (Syed Saddiq) treated the deemed ‘decision’ (to revoke the allocations) as having been made after the (absence of a reply to) the ‘ultimatum’ (letter).
“I don’t think this is a correct point of law. There is also no legal obligation for the respondents (Anwar and the government) to respond to the ultimatum,” Wan Farid said.
The judge said Syed Saddiq and the three voters should have sought leave for judicial review by December 2023, within three months after losing access to MyKhas.
“Assuming I might be wrong on the extension of time, I will briefly address the matter of whether leave ought to be granted.
“The federal allocation (to MPs) is a government policy matter and the court has no purview to examine it,” Wan Farid said.
He added that there were no statutory or constitutional provisions that required the government to provide allocation for MPs, whether in the government bloc or opposition.
Syed Saddiq and the trio of voters had sought a court order to quash the decision to withhold RM500,000 from a total of RM1.7 million that was supposed to be directly channelled to the bank account of the MP’s service centre for welfare, community well-being and disaster relief programmes.
They also asked the court to reinstate Syed Saddiq’s access to MyKhas, which manages the RM2 million development fund for the constituency, and overturn the decision to cancel several projects worth RM230,300 that were approved through the system.
They likewise challenged the refusal to approve or allocate funds to Syed Saddiq as the Muar MP for programmes under Projek Mesra Rakyat or similar initiatives for 2024.
Lawyer Lim Wei Jiet appeared for Syed Saddiq and the voters while senior federal counsel Nurhaffiza Azizan appeared for the government.