PUTRAJAYA, Jan 9 — The Federal Court today dismissed an application for leave to appeal by 50 retired Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) personnel seeking to overturn a ruling on pension adjustments.

A three-man bench comprising Court of Appeal president Datuk Abu Bakar Jais and Federal Court judges Datuk Azimah Omar and Datuk Seri Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera made the ruling in a 2–1 majority decision.

Justices Abu Bakar and Azimah formed the majority, while Justice Vazeer delivered a dissenting decision. The court made no order as to costs.

Delivering the majority decision, Justice Abu Bakar said the questions proposed by the applicants were not questions of law but were instead factual in nature.

He also said there were no plain errors in the Court of Appeal’s judgment, noting that the appellate court had provided extensive reasons for allowing the government’s appeal.

In dissenting, Justice Vazeer held that the retirees had met the threshold requirements under Section 96 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964 and should have been granted leave to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision.

This decision effectively maintains the Court of Appeal’s earlier decision in favour of the government.

On June 4, last year, the Court of Appeal three-man bench overturned the High Court’s earlier ruling, which held that MAF retirees who retired before January 1, 2013, were entitled to have their pensions adjusted to the rates and methods applied to the retirees who retired after January 1, 2013.

That bench had allowed the appeals by the government, the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the Malaysian Armed Forces Council to set aside the High Court’s decision. This prompted the retirees to seek leave to appeal in the Federal Court.

The appellate court, in its ruling, held that the MAF retirees failed to prove that the respondents breached the provisions under the Federal Constitution.

Fifty army personnel of various ranks, including major, lieutenant, staff sergeant and private, filed an originating summons in the High Court on November 17, 2022, seeking a declaration that the defendants had violated the provisions in the Federal Constitution, read together with Section 187 of the Malaysian Armed Forces Act 1972, for their failure to implement a new pension adjustment for the MAF retirees who retired before January 1, 2013.

They claimed the government had failed to implement new pension adjustments for all MAF retirees who retired before January 1, 2013, causing a significant pension gap between the MAF retirees who retired before January 1, 2013 and those who retired after January 1, 2013.

At the Federal Court today, lawyers Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla and Nurul Huda Razali represented the retirees, while senior federal counsel Ahmad Hanir Hambaly@Arwi and Federal Counsel Mohammad Sallehuddin Md Ali appeared for the government. — Bernama