GEORGE TOWN (Jan 15, 2009) : The Pahang accountant who filed a suit against the Penang Island Municipal Council and the Penang government over multilingual road signs has no locus standi to institute the suit as he is not a rate payer here.

In their statement of defence, the defendants said Nik Rizman Sapian, 33, is a resident of Kuala Lipis, Pahang and thus has no locus standi to file the suit.

They also said Nik Rizman does not have a personal interest in the issue.

When the case was mentioned at the High Court today, one of the 10 counsel newly appointed to represent the council and the state government, Jagdeep Singh Deo, submitted a notice of change of counsel.

He also filed a statement of defence for the state government. The council’s statement of defence had been filed earlier.

In its statement of defence, the state government said it exercised its prerogative and power to implement multi-lingual street name plates in certain places within the heritage conservation area in George Town.

It also said the state committee on street and places naming had, on Nov 9, 2006 approved the use of bilingual street name plates in George Town.

In 2007, street name plates of 46 streets were changed from monolingual to bilingual and in 2008, 10 street name plates were changed from monolingual to bilingual.

This, according to the defendants, means a total of 56 streets have bilingual street name plates prior to the filing of the suit.

“Bilingual street name plates had been implemented since February 2007 and we merely proposed to extend this to multilingual street name plates,” the defendants said.

The defendants also said the state executive council (exco) decided at a meeting on Oct 24 last year to carry on with the implementation of multilingual street name plates in certain places within the conservation area in George Town.

The implementation was due to factors such as an anticipated increase in tourism as a result of the listing of George Town as a World Heritage Site by Unesco on July 8, 2008. The federal government has also used Mandarin and Arabic as additional languages in announcements at international airports, bilingual street name plates are used in Kuching, Sarawak and the Tourism Ministry had used bilingual advertisement boards on the island.

In his writ of summons, Nik Rizman sought a declaration that the state government’s move to approve the council’s application to install multilingual street name plates was at odds with Article 152 of the Federal Constitution which states that Malay is the national language.

He also sought an injunction to stop the council from installing the multilingual street name plates within the heritage area of George Town.

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