Feb 23 fixed for case management in Anwar’s lawsuit against Muhyiddin

KUALA LUMPUR: The Kuala Lumpur High Court has fixed Feb 23 for the next case management of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s lawsuit against Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

The Prime Minister has also been instructed by the court to file his reply to the defence by Feb 16.

This comes after Muhyiddin had filed his defence on Jan 17.

A case management by way of e-review was held on Thursday (Jan 19) before assistant registrar Nur Shasha Hidayah Nor Azahar.

Datuk Sankara Nair, Jaden Phoon Wai Ken and Wong Guo Jin appeared for Anwar while Chetan Lachman Jethwani represented Muhyiddin.

The next case management for status updates will be done by way of e-review before the assistant registrar.

Anwar is suing the Perikatan Nasional chairman over the latter’s allegation that Anwar was paid RM15mil while he was the economic adviser to Selangor.

The writ of summons was filed by Messrs SN Nair & Partners at the High Court on Dec 20.

In the statement of claim, Anwar said that Muhyiddin gave an election speech at Taman Selasih in Kulim on Dec 5, in support of Perikatan candidate Datuk Azman Nasrudin, where the Pagoh MP made those claims.

Excerpts of the speech were then republished in the TikTok application via a TikTok account under the name “@beritakini8”, which garnered more than 1.1 million views, 6,061 comments, more than 21,400 “likes”, more than 1,360 “favourites’ and 2,169 shares as of Dec 7.

Anwar, who is the Tambun MP, said the defendant then republished his entire speech on his Facebook account under the name “Muhyiddin Yassin’, which is still accessible until today.

The plaintiff said that the libellous words were meant to say that he was unreliable and untruthful about accepting millions from the Selangor state government as the economic adviser, and that he was unethical, unprincipled, corrupted, a hypocrite and not a good Muslim.

He is seeking general, compensatory, aggravated and exemplary damages.

He is also seeking an injunction to restrain the defendant from further repeating the libellous words.

Through his lawyers, Anwar had previously sent Muhyiddin a letter of demand on Dec 7 for an apology and retraction from the former premier over the allegations.