Home minister Hamzah Zainudin said this was to enable the government not to be subject to contempt of court, and at the same time, comply with the provisions of the Federal Constitution.
He said there were two different Kuala Lumpur High Court decisions, namely the case of Suriani Kempe and six others against the Malaysian government and the case of Mahisha Sulaiha Abdul Majeed against the national registration department (JPN) director-general along with two others over the interpretation of the term “father” in the Second Schedule Part II Section 1 (b) and 1 (c) of the Federal Constitution.
“In the Cabinet meeting earlier, we invited Attorney-General Idrus Harun to provide an explanation. The Cabinet has asked the attorney-general to also bring the issue to the Deputy Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah of Perak, in the near future,” he said during the home ministry’s special press conference here yesterday.
He said the decision was made after taking into account the different judgments in the two cases, and the court proceedings in the Mahisha Sulaiha case, which is still ongoing at the Court of Appeal, and set to be heard in November.
In the case of Mahisha Sulaiha which was decided by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on May 21, 2020, the ruling was made in favour of the government and was appealed by the former at the Court of Appeal, while the ruling in the case of Suriani Kempe and six others did not favour the government.
On Sept 9, the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that babies born overseas to Malaysian women who are married to foreigners are automatically entitled to Malaysian citizenship.
Lawyer Gurdial Singh Nijar was reported to have said that judge Akhtar Tahir ruled that the word “father” in the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution should mean and include the mother.
It was reported that the judge made the decision after examining several Articles in the Federal Constitution, and also ordered all relevant authorities to issue documents such as identity cards to the babies.
The High Court made the decision during online proceedings after allowing the suit initiated by the Association of Family Support & Welfare Selangor & KL (Family Frontiers) as well as six Malaysian women married to foreigners to enable their babies born overseas to automatically obtain citizenship.
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