Muhyiddin ready to face Anwar in court

SHAH ALAM - Former prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin confirms receiving the writ of summons and statement of claim from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

In a brief statement on his Facebook, Muhyiddin said he will leave it to his lawyers to handle the legal action filed by Anwar against him, yesterday.

"As Anwar has chosen to bring this matter to court, I leave it to my lawyer to handle the case according to the law," Muhyiddin wrote.

Anwar filed the defamation suit yesterday (Tuesday) against the Perikatan Nasional (PN) chairman for alleging that he (Anwar) received a RM15 million salary annually when he was Selangor government's economic adviser.

The Pakatan Harapan (PH) chairman filed the suit through S.N. Nair & Partners at the Kuala Lumpur High Court naming Muhyiddin as the sole defendant.

According to the statement of claim, Anwar claimed that on Dec 5, Muhyiddin made the statement during the "Grand Finale Perikatan Nasional Padang Serai” ceramah in front of hundreds of people in Taman Selasih, Kulim, in support of PN candidate Datuk Azman Nasrudin in the 15th General Election (GE15).

Anwar claimed that Muhyiddin's speech at the ceramah was published or led to its republication on a TikTok account under the name "@beritakini8", which gained more than 1.1 million views as of Dec 7.

The alleged defamatory remarks, Anwar said was quoted by MalaysiaKini and published in an article on the news portal entitled "MB's aide to Muhyiddin: Anwar paid RM1 as S'gor economic adviser" on the same day.

Anwar's lawyers on the same day issued a letter of demand to Muhyiddin to ask the latter to pay compensation, retract the statement and apologise for his comments and to promise not to repeat the same words.

The lawyers had said failure to comply with the demands would result in legal action.

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

Anwar claimed that the statement implied that he was untrustworthy and dishonest regarding the receipt of millions of ringgit from the Selangor state government as economic adviser and had lied to the public by stating that he had received only RM1 as salary for that role.

He said the remarks were calculated to severely disparage and undermine his reputation and character, apart from damaging his good name and character as a firm supporter of the rule of law and social reforms.

He claimed that Muhyiddin was reluctant to apologise and retract the statement and in fact, had continued to publish it and did not remove it until now although Anwar had denied the statement.

Anwar is seeking general, aggravated, exemplary and compensatory damages, among others as well as an injunction to restrain him from continuing to publish or disseminate similar defamatory statements.