Anwar sues Muhyiddin for defamation over claim of S$4.6 million pay as Selangor adviser, wants compensation

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim sued the country's former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin for defamation on Tuesday (Dec 20), seeking to stop the latter from publishing untrue claims that he had received RM15 million (S$4.6 million) per year previously as Selangor government's adviser.

In the defamation lawsuit filed at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur, Mr Anwar said the remarks made by Mr Muhyiddin in an election campaign speech on Dec 5 for the Padang Serai parliamentary seat were untrue, malicious and aimed at cheap publicity for personal, political and electioneering gains.

Mr Anwar is also seeking compensation from Mr Muhyiddin in the form of general, compensatory, aggravated, and exemplary damages over the alleged defamation.

He is also seeking an injunction or court order to stop Mr Muhyiddin from further saying, writing, publishing or distributing the same or similar defamatory words.

In his court filing, Mr Anwar accused Mr Muhyiddin of making the defamatory remark during the “Grand Finale Perikatan Nasional (PN) Padang Serai” at Taman Selasih, Kulim in Kedah on Dec 5, which was just two days before the polling day on Dec 7 for the Padang Serai seat.

Mr Muhyiddin is PN chairman and the event was to garner support for its Padang Serai candidate Azman Nasrudin who subsequently won.

Mr Anwar said excerpts from that speech were published by the TikTok account @beritakini8 and gained 1.1 million views, 6,061 comments, over 21,400 likes, and 2,169 shares by Dec 7.

He claimed it had even made it to the favourite list of over 1,360 accounts.

He said his lawyers issued a letter of demand to Mr Muhyiddin on Dec 7, asking the latter to retract and apologise for his campaign comments and a promite not to repeat the same words, failing which he should pay compensation.

He said Mr Muhyiddin published a video of the entire speech on his Facebook account the very next day, which garnered over 42,000 views, 506 comments, over 2,800 reactions and 48 shares as of today.

Mr Anwar noted that Mr Muhyiddin had through his lawyers replied in a Dec 9 letter to deny that the remarks were defamatory against Mr Anwar. MALAY MAIL.