KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia’s new electoral boundaries and renaming of seats will be implemented from Thursday (March 29) after the King gave his royal assent to the redelineation recommendations.

The move comes hours after the Court of Appeal dismissed the Selangor government’s appeal to challenge the Election Commission’s redelineation exercise, saying the state government’s complaints of gerrymandering and malapportionment are not subject to a trial in the court of law.

In an order gazetted on Thursday by the federal Barisan Nasional (BN) government, it was stated that the King had exercised his powers under the Federal Constitution’s Thirteenth Schedule (Section 9) to make the order for the EC’s proposals to be implemented.

“This order comes into operation on March 29, 2018,” the order dated March 28 said.

“The recommendations contained in the report of the Election Commission dated March 6, 2018 shall have effect from the date of the coming into operation of this Order.”

The order — signed off by Cabinet secretary Ali Hamsa — is also known as the Federal Constitution (Delimitation of Constituencies) (States of Malaya) Order 2018.

This means that the new voting boundaries can now be used for the upcoming general election, which is speculated to be held by end of April or early May.

Malaysia’s Parliament on Wednesday passed the proposal to redraw the country’s electoral boundaries, amid opposition outcry and fears that the move will benefit BN in the upcoming general election.

Opponents of the redrawing process say it shoves opposition-inclined voters into opposition-held seats to create super-constituencies and also reshapes constituencies to have more distinct ethnic majorities.

The EC denies this.

Meanwhile earlier on Thursday, Malaysia's Court of Appeal in its judgement read out by Justice Vernon Ong, ruled that Selangor has locus standi, or the right, to challenge the redelineation in court.

But the court did not rule in favour of Selangor regarding its claims of gerrymandering, unfair redelineation and complaints of malapportionment, on the basis that it is not justiciable.

Justice Ahmadi Asnawi led the bench with Mr Ong and Mr Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil.

In its unanimous decision, the court also ruled that the EC should have included the supplementary roll, released in September, 2016, to the electoral roll.

However, it also referred to Section 9A of the Elections Act 1958, which prevents judicial challenges on electoral rolls that have already been gazetted.

No order to costs was awarded.

Selangor, which is controlled by the opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) pact, may appeal, said its lawyer Latheefa Koya.

“This is first time the court has actually gone into the full merit of the issue,” she told reporters after the ruling.

“It is our argument that the EC has been using the wrong electoral roll, as it has not taken the supplementary roll published in September 14, 2016.”

The court agreed on Thursday with Selangor’s argument that the EC should use the current electoral roll. However, the court ruled in favour of the EC that its review for the redelineation process began when it began meeting in July, 2016.

“Unfortunately because of that, they decided that the current roll does not include supplementary roll. Otherwise the point is made (by the court) that they (EC) should use the supplementary roll,” Ms Latheefa said.

“Of course the fact that they’re using an invalid roll without addressed and all that, we cannot challenge it under Section 9A,” she said.

Ms Latheefa said it was not the end of the road to challenge the redelineation.

“The other important point to note is that the court did not rule that this is an academic exercise. Because of that, we will be taking instructions from our client whether we will move forward with an appeal in the Federal Court,” she said.

Selangor had appeal against the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s decision to dismiss the state’s judicial review application in December.

The state government made four points against the constitutionality of the EC’s actions and proposals, which are that:

* They violate Article 113 and the 13th Schedule as they cause a malapportionment of electoral seats and are a product of gerrymandering.

* They are in breach of Section 3 of the 13th Schedule as they are not based on the ‘current electoral rolls’ as required by the federal constitution.

* They rely on the locality codes rather than the actual addresses of voters in the Delimitation Exercise, whereby there are missing addresses of 136,272 voters in the state of Selangor.

* The EC has acted in violation of the rules of natural justice and of the legitimate expectation of voters, local authorities and state government by the failure to provide adequate information and particulars of its proposals such as to deny the opportunity of making a meaningful representation of the local inquiries. AGENCIES