Muda deputy president sues RoS to challenge its blacklist on her as office-holder

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) deputy president Amira Aisya Abd Aziz has filed a lawsuit in her bid to cancel the Registrar of Societies' (RoS) indefinite blacklist against her that bars her from being an office-bearer in any registered organisation, including the political party itself.

In her suit filed on July 13 at the High Court here, Amira Aisya is seeking a court order to quash the RoS' decision to blacklist her from holding positions in any registered society in Malaysia.

She is also asking the court to declare that RoS does not have the powers under the Societies Act 1966 to blacklist her.

Amira Aisya, who is also Puteri Wangsa assemblyman, said she had only found out about the blacklist when the RoS rejected her April 16 application to register a new organisation called Persatuan Impak Wanita Malaysia with her as its chairman.

On April 18, the Selangor RoS had sent an email to reject the application by stating that Amira Aisya had been blacklisted, and that the four committee members' work address and residential address should be from the same state and with their residential address to be their current ones.

After searching on RoS' website to check its online list of individuals blacklisted from being office holders, Amira Aisya said she found her name on the blacklist effective October 28, 2022 and with her offence stated as being under “Section 13(1)(c)(iv)”.

The website search result did not state how long she would be on the blacklist.

Amira Aisya said she was unsure why she was alleged to have breached the Societies Act's Section 13(1)(c)(iv).

But she added that it could be linked to the Persatuan Ekonomi Merdeka, an organisation formed on November 3, 2017 and was registered with the RoS, in which she had been secretary from August 3, 2017 to October 19, 2022.

Amira Aisya said Persatuan Ekonomi Merdeka was previously informed by the Selangor branch of the Malaysian Insolvency Department that the RoS had deregistered the organisation on September 28, 2022.

She added that no appeals or lawsuits were filed to challenge the RoS deregistration due to various reasons such as financial reasons.

She argued that RoS has no powers under the law to blacklist her from holding positions in other organisations, despite what happened with the Persatuan Ekonomi Merdeka.

Amira Aisya said the RoS blacklist is against her right to form associations under the Federal Constitution's Article 10(1)(c), as the decision blocks her from contesting any position within Muda and forming any other organisation for causes close to her heart such as women rights, education and the environment.

She claimed that there are no laws that give the RoS the power to indefinitely blacklist individuals from holding any position in any organisation, adding that it had exceeded its powers.

She also said she was denied the right to be heard before RoS made the “drastic” decision to blacklist her.

She argued that RoS was unreasonable and disproportionate in deciding to blacklist her, and that being a committee member of an organisation which allegedly breached Section 13(1)(c)(iv) does not mean the person can be blacklisted from holding positions in other organisations.

Lawyer and fellow Muda co-founder Lim Wei Jiet’s law firm filed the judicial review application on Amira Aisya’s behalf.

When contacted by Malay Mail, Lim confirmed that Amira Aisya had on August 17 obtained leave from the High Court for her judicial review application or for her lawsuit to be heard.

Based on online court listings, the case is scheduled for case management on September 14, with no hearing dates fixed yet.

* A previous version of this story contained an error which has since been corrected.