Anwar fails in eleventh hour bid to get stay of Thursday's hearing

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim failed in his eleventh hour bid, Wednesday to obtain an order from the Federal Court here to stay the hearing of the prosecution's appeal against his acquittal on a sodomy charge. The hearing of the prosecution's appeal has been set for hearing for two days starting Thursday.

A five-member panel of the Federal Court chaired by Justice Tan Sri Abdull Hamid Embong ruled that there were no merits on the two grounds cited by Anwar to support his application for a stay of tomorrow's court proceeding.

The court unanimously dismissed Anwar's application for an interim stay.

"We find there is no reason for us to disturb the discretion of the Court of Appeal in refusing to grant the interim stay (to Anwar)," said Abdull Hamid who presided on the panel with Justices Tan Sri Ahmad Maarop, Datuk Hasan Lah, Datin Paduka Zaleha Zahari and Datuk Ramly Ali.

Following this decision, the hearing of the prosecution's appeal will proceed Thursday.

Anwar was seeking for a stay of tomorrow's court proceedings pending the hearing of his appeal at the Federal Court over the Court of Appeal's decision on Monday which denied his third application to disqualify senior lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah from leading the prosecution's team in its appeal tomorrow.

Anwar applied to the Federal Court for the stay order as the Court of Appeal had also rejected his application for a stay of Thursday's proceeding.

The opposition leader had filed the notice of appeal this morning followed by the application for the stay.

The panel presided over the matter at 5.10pm, Wednesday evening.

One of Anwar's lawyers, R.Sivarasa said Anwar's appeal would be considered academic since he failed to obtain the stay order.

In the proceedings Wednesday, Anwar's other counsel, Karpal Singh, gave two grounds to support the stay application namely that there would be a conflict of interest if Muhammad Shafee appeared as lead prosecutor in the appeal and also he (Muhammad Shafee) was not a fit and proper person to be a deputy public prosecutor.

He said Anwar must be given every right to exhaust his legal avenues.

However, Muhammad Shafee said there was no hope of success in Anwar's appeal with regard to his third disqualification application, adding that what Anwar was doing was to delay Thursday's hearing of the appeal.

The prosecution is appealing against the Jan 9, 2012 High Court decision which had acquitted and discharged Anwar on a charge of sodomising his former aide Mohd Saiful, 26, at a Desa Damansara condominium unit in Bukit Damansara between 3.10 pm and 4.30 pm on June 26, 2008.