When the issue of citizenship is questionable

 During my engagement with our Media friends recently, I have raised ques­tions about Dr Ting Tiong Choon’s cit­i­zen­ship af­ter a Fed­eral Court ruled in favour of the State Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly’s (DUN) move to dis­qual­ify him as a mem­ber due to his past dual cit­i­zen­ship.

I have mentioned that it is a ‘no-no’ for a Malaysian to hold cit­i­zen­ship of an­other coun­try as this would in­volve the ci­ti­zen’s loy­alty to our Yang DiPertua Agong and Malaysia as a nation.

It was made known that Dr Ting was also hold­ing cit­i­zen­ship of another coun­try be­fore he con­tested at the (last state) elec­tion. What happened to Dr Ting was that he ap­plied for Aus­tralian cit­i­zen­ship and he got it.

I found that from a le­gal per­spec­tive, when you ap­ply for Aus­tralian citizen­ship, strictly your Malaysian cit­i­zen­ship drops. Once it drops, that means you have to re-apply back to become a Malaysian ci­ti­zen.

In my opin­ion, it is for the Malaysian gov­ern­ment to look into this mat­ter, whether to throw him out of this coun­try as he (Dr Ting) is no longer a Malaysian - or to charge him for hav­ing dual cit­i­zen­ship.

I have also pointed out that Dr Ting, as a pro­fes­sional, should have known that his Malaysian cit­i­zen­ship would au­to­mat­i­cally be dropped when he ap­plied for the Aus­tralian cit­i­zen­ship.

He also said that when a can­di­date in an elec­tion sub­mits his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers, the can­di­date has to sign a statu­tory dec­la­ra­tion to de­clare that he is a Malaysian ci­ti­zen and that he had never com­mit­ted any crime.

I leave it to fed­eral prose­cu­tors whether to charge him or not (over the statu­tory dec­la­ra­tion).

I sympathised with Dr Ting, who is the Demo­cratic Ac­tion Party (DAP) Miri chair­man who had lost his seat in DUN as the Pu­jut as­sem­bly­man fol­low­ing the Fed­eral Court’s ma­jor­ity de­ci­sion made on 11 February.

The Fed­eral Court found that the Sarawak’s DUN has the power to dis­qual­ify Ting for hav­ing dual cit­i­zen­ship de­spite him re­nounc­ing it be­fore con­test­ing in the state elec­tion in 2016.

Dr Ting, who had ac­quired Aus­tralian cit­i­zen­ship in 2010, was dis­qualified as an elected rep­re­sen­ta­tive on May 12, 2017, fol­low­ing a mo­tion tabled by Dato Seri Wong Soon Koh.

He then filed an Orig­i­nat­ing Sum­mons in the Kuch­ing High Court on June 7 that same year to chal­lenge the de­ci­sion by the DUN to dis­qual­ify him.

The High Court sub­se­quently ruled against the DUN’s de­ci­sion to dis­qual­ify Dr Ting as Pu­jut as­sem­bly­man.

In July 2019, the Court of Ap­peal dis­missed the ap­peal filed by DUN, As­fia and Wong, rul­ing that the DUN had ex­ceeded its power when it dis­qual­i­fied Dr Ting on the ba­sis of his dual cit­i­zen­ship.