KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 20 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today sued former prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin for defamation, and is seeking to be compensated and stop the latter from publishing untrue claims that he had received RM15 million per year previously as Selangor government's adviser.
In the defamation lawsuit filed today at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur, Anwar said remarks made by Muhyiddin in an election campaign speech on December 5 for the Padang Serai parliamentary seat were untrue, malicious and aimed at cheap publicity for personal, political and electioneering gains.
In the lawsuit, Anwar is seeking compensation from Muhyiddin in the form of general, compensatory, aggravated, and exemplary damages over the alleged defamation.
Anwar is also seeking an injunction or court order to stop Muhyiddin from further saying, writing, publishing or distributing the same or similar defamatory words.
In his court filing, Anwar accused Muhyiddin of making the defamatory remark during the “Grand Finale Perikatan Nasional Padang Serai” at Taman Selasih, Kulim in Kedah on December 5, which was just two days before the polling day on December 7 for the Padang Serai seat.
Muhyiddin is PN chairman and the event was to garner support for its Padang Serai candidate Datuk Azman Nasrudin who subsequently won.
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 December 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 Muhyiddin on December 7, asking the latter to retract and apologise for his campaign comments, to promise not to repeat the same words, and to pay compensation. The letter had said failure to comply with the demands such as apologising would result in legal action being taken.
He said 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.
Anwar noted that Muhyiddin had through his lawyers replied in a December 9 letter to deny that the remarks were defamatory against Anwar.
