KOTA KINABALU: The Federal Government has today filed an application to stay the High Court’s October 17, 2025 order, former Sabah Law Society (SLS) president Datuk Roger Chin said.

The High Court order, among other things, directs the Federal Government to hold a further review with the Sabah State Government regarding the state’s constitutional right to claim 40 per cent of net revenue derived from Sabah.

Chin, who is also an appointed assemblyman, said the order was not advisory in nature but declared a constitutional breach and issued mandamus compelling the performance of a constitutional duty within fixed timelines.

He said the High Court had directed that the constitutional review required under Article 112D be conducted within 90 days and that agreement be reached within 180 days.

“By the Government’s own affidavit, the 90-day period expired on Jan 14, 2026 and the 180-day period will expire on April 15, 2026,” he said.

Chin pointed out that no stay was sought when judgment was delivered in October 2025, nor in the weeks that followed, and not before the expiry of the first compliance deadline.

“The application was filed only on March 3, 2026, after the 90-day period had already lapsed. That is not a minor procedural detail. It is the defining fact,” he said in his Facebook posting, today.

While acknowledging that the right of appeal is not in question, Chin said what demands attention is the sequence of events.

According to him, a party that genuinely believes an order should not operate pending appeal would act immediately to prevent its operation.

“It does not allow time to pass, permit part of the order to fall due, and then invoke urgency when the consequences of inaction become real. Urgency discovered only after deadlines have expired is not urgency; it is reaction,” he said.

Chin said the affidavit supporting the stay suggested that compliance might give rise to “irreversible” consequences and referred to the possibility of contempt proceedings if the Order is not stayed.

“That submission is telling. Contempt arises only from disobedience. To characterise the ordinary enforcement of a court’s judgment as prejudice is, in substance, to treat compliance as an injury,” he said.

He also highlighted that the Government had acknowledged negotiations with the State Government are already ongoing.

“Engagement is happening. Discussions are underway. The practical machinery of review is not impossible. What appears intolerable is not the act of compliance, but compliance within fixed judicial timelines and under the discipline of enforceable obligation,” he said.

Chin stressed that mandamus was granted because the Court found decades of constitutional non-compliance.

“The deadlines were not incidental. They were imposed precisely because open-ended engagement had produced no resolution. They were a response to history,” he said.

He said when a stay is sought only after one deadline has expired and another is imminent, the inference is difficult to avoid.

“The issue is not procedural fairness. It is discomfort with finality,” he said.

Chin warned that constitutional erosion does not occur through open defiance alone.

“This is how constitutional erosion occurs. Not through open defiance, but through delay recast as prudence. Not through dramatic refusal, but through the steady normalisation of postponement. A duty acknowledged but deferred is, in practice, a duty denied,” he said.

He added that no constitutional system collapses merely because appeals are filed, as appeals are part of the rule of law.

“It weakens when compliance is treated as something to be negotiated until enforcement becomes unavoidable. It weakens when timelines are allowed to pass and urgency is invoked only when consequences can no longer be ignored.

“The High Court drew a line because the pattern of delay had become undeniable. The stay application of March 3, 2026 does not simply challenge that judgment. By its timing, it risks confirming it.

“A Constitution does not diminish because it is litigated. It diminishes when obedience becomes conditional, and when the performance of constitutional duty requires compulsion rather than commitment.

“In matters of constitutional governance, sequence is not optics. It is evidence. And the sequence here speaks with clarity,” he said.