Yong Vui Kong, a 23-year-old Malaysian who faces execution for smuggling 47 grams (1.7 ounces) of heroin to Singapore, lost a bid at the city state’s highest court for a presidential review of his sentence.

Yong Vui Kong, a 23-year-old Malaysian who faces execution for smuggling 47 grams (1.7 ounces) of heroin to Singapore, lost a bid at the city state’s highest court for a presidential review of his sentence.

Yong’s lawyer M. Ravi asked a three-judge appeal panel to re-examine Singapore’s clemency process, in the first case of its kind. Ravi had argued the president had the power to grant a pardon, rather than Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s cabinet, which had earlier advised President SR Nathan not to commute the sentence.

Yong’s appeal was “devoid of merit,” Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong said in delivering the verdict today on behalf of a three-judge panel.

Singapore, which has one of the world’s lowest crime rates, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, has a mandatory death sentence for drug smuggling. Yong had lost an earlier appeal in which he argued the mandatory provision was unconstitutional.

Ravi said he plans to appeal again to the city state’s cabinet seeking clemency.

“He was hoping for the best,” Ravi said after the ruling. “He’s deeply disappointed and aggrieved by the judgment.”

Yong, who appeared in court today in a purple prison jumpsuit with his head shaved, was a former kitchen helper who sold DVDs in a night market. He claimed he tried to provide money for his mother by smuggling drugs into Singapore. An online petition appealing for clemency for Yong had at least 42,039 signatures.

Mandatory Death Sentence

Singapore also imposes a mandatory death sentence for murder and some firearms offenses. The city’s overall crime rate slipped 0.6 percent to 32,986 cases last year, according to data from the police.

“We take a very serious view of drug trafficking,” Lee said in December 2005, when he dismissed Australia’s calls to commute Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van’s death sentence. “The penalty is death.”

Nguyen’s death sentence for smuggling 396 grams of heroin into Singapore in 2002 caused an uproar in Australia. Consumers, politicians and newspapers editorials there called for boycotts of companies including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.’s Optus unit and Singapore Airlines Ltd.