Pereira Coutinho threatens AL president with lawsuit

Lawmaker José Pereira Coutinho is threatening Legislative Assembly (AL) President Ho Iat Seng with a lawsuit in relation to the case which involves the suspension of lawmaker Sulu Sou’s mandate. Coutinho sent a letter to Ho, to which the Times had access, following a previous request for access to the documents sent by the AL to the Court of Second Instance (TSI).

According to Coutinho, the TSI requested the relevant documents from the AL in order to justify the continued suspension of Sulu’s mandate as a lawmaker. The AL sent the documents, but Coutinho claims many of the lawmakers, including himself, are unaware of their contents.

In the letter Coutinho wrote to Ho Iat Seng, he states to that he issued a first request to access the documents on January 18, but received no reply.

In the lawmaker’s opinion, Ho is acting as the “incumbent of the penal act” when in reality, he is simply a “representative” of the AL.

Given this, Coutinho argues that Ho has a duty as president of the AL to inform all lawmakers of every procedure undertaken by the body. If he fails to do this, Coutinho has threatened to appeal directly to courts.

“The petitioned [Pereira Coutinho] reserves the right to appeal to the courts to assert his rights,” Coutinho states in the last section of his letter to the AL President, dated January 29.

In the letter’s paragraphs the lawmaker reminds Ho that the AL and its administrative bodies are only the trustees of the public interest and representatives of the will of the lawmakers within the AL. As such, Coutinho suggests that Ho is acting beyond the scope of his own mandate by limiting access of the process surrounding Sulu to only a small group of people.