Anwar files RM10mil suit over sexual innuendo
Malaysiakini.com
Apr 18, 2008
Beh Lih Yi

PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim has launched a RM10 million defamation suit against a deputy minister for allegedly insinuating the former as homosexual. MCPX

sankara nairAnwar filed the suit through his counsel Sankara Nair (photo) at the Kuala Lumpur High Court this afternoon and cited Deputy Education Minister Dr Wee Ka Siong as the defendant over the latter’s remark of which was made during the Machap by-election campaign in April last year.

“The whole false notion of sodomy (against Anwar) has to be put to an end once and for all.”

“Anybody who unfairly tries to hold or attempt to resurrect this vile and concocted falsity will have to face action in court,” the lawyer said when contacted later.

The suit, filed three days after Anwar’s five-year ban from active politics expired, is seen as his effort and readiness to make a comeback to the forefront of the political scene without the alleged sodomy claim continuing to haunt him.

Once heir apparent to ex-premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar was sacked in 1998 and subsequently charged and convicted for sodomy and corruption in which he served a total of 15 years in jail for both offences.

The sodomy conviction was quashed in 2004 upon appeal to the Federal Court and he was freed. By then, he had already completed his six-year jail sentence for corruption.

Till today, Anwar has adamantly claimed that the charges were trumped up as part of a political conspiracy against him, an allegation which Mahathir had denied.

Wee: Remark misconstrued

The RM10 million suit was based on a Malaysiakini report on April 11 last year quoting Wee’s comment at a ceramah on the eve of the Machap by-election in Malacca.

wee ka siongWee (photo), the Ayer Hitam MP then and MCA Youth secretary-general, had labelled Anwar as someone who “can say one thing then and something else now. For him, front is okay, back is also okay”.

He was reportedly to have made the remark while addressing several hundred supporters in a mixture of Mandarin and Hakka, a Chinese dialect.

Wee had subsequently told reporters that he was misconstrued and that his remark did not carry the connotation as alleged by Anwar.

According to Anwar’s statement of claim today, the suit was a result of Wee’s refusal to retract and apologise over the remark as asked to do so earlier through a letter of demand.

The grounds cited by Anwar for his suit included that the remark, among others, that implied him as a homosexual, a pervert and of no moral, unfit to hold political office, dangerous to Malaysian society and engaged in activities which run contrary to Islam.

Causing ‘distress, anxiety’ to Anwar

anwar ibrahim 02 060207The ex-deputy premier considered the offending words to have disreputed him and cause “irreparable damage to (Anwar’s) character, credit and reputation, both nationally and internationally”.

Anwar also claimed to have suffered “considerable distress, anxiety and embarrassment” due to the remark.

The PKR leader is asking for RM10 million in compensatory, aggravated and exemplary damages and an injunction to refrain Wee from making further similar remark.

This is the third such suit filed by Anwar over statements made to allegedly implying his sexual orientations.

In January 2006, he filed a RM100 million defamation suit against Mahathir for calling him a ‘sodomiser’ at a human rights conference in 2005. The suit however was quashed in July last year.

Anwar has also filed a suit against Umno Youth deputy chief Khairy Jamaluddin in the run-up to the March 8 general election after Khairy was said to have given listeners at a ceramah the impression that Anwar was a homosexual.

The RM100 million suit has yet to be heard.

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