[UPDATED] Court throws out KJ’s appeal bid against Anwar’s defamation suit

KUALA LUMPUR – Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s appeal against a RM100 million defamation suit filed by opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has been dismissed by the Court of Appeal today. 

Besides ordering Khairy to pay RM50,000 in costs to Anwar, the three-person bench chaired by Datuk Lee Swee Seng unanimously ruled that there was no appealable error warranting the bench’s intervention. 

The appeal was filed by the former Umno Youth chief against a Kuala Lumpur High Court ruling on September 29, 2017, which found him liable for defaming Anwar with a “main belakang” remark made during a ceramah in the run-up to the 12th general election in 2008. 

The lower court had then ordered the Rembau MP to pay RM150,000 in damages to the Port Dickson MP. 

Besides Lee, according to Malaysiakini, Datuk Darryl Goon Siew Chye and Datuk Ghazali Cha were also part of the bench today, with Goon reading out the unanimous decision during this morning’s proceedings via Zoom. 

The ruling found no error on the part of lower court judge Azizul Azmi Adnan’s finding that Khairy’s remark was defamatory against Anwar when taken in the context of the statement’s analogy and figure of speech as well as its natural meaning and inference. 

“As has been succinctly described, sayings like people are known by the company they keep, it is what the ordinary people infer from them,” Goon said. 

He added that the trial judge’s ruling for Khairy to pay Anwar RM150,000 in damages was not manifestly excessive and thus also does not warrant the Court of Appeal’s intervention. 

After the decision was delivered, Khairy’s counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah informed the panel that he has been instructed to file for an application for leave to appeal to the Federal Court.

In the previous Court of Appeal hearing on November 2 last year, the Umno lawmaker’s legal team had argued that the remark in question was not a reference to Anwar’s sodomy case and was instead alluding to the then opposition’s pre-election marriage of convenience prior to GE12. 

During submissions on January 17 this year, Anwar’s legal team – led by former federal court judge Tan Sri Gopal Sri Ram – had responded by countering that the high court had accurately concluded that the primarily Umno crowd at the 2008 Lembah Pantai speech would understand the context of Khairy’s remark to refer to the sodomy allegation against Anwar. 

Following the remark, Anwar filed a RM100 million defamation suit against Khairy in the high court in early 2008. 

On February 19, 2018, the appellate court had struck out Khairy’s appeal after being ordered to pay Anwar RM150,000 in damages and did not hear the merits of Khairy’s appeal. 

However, on December 15 last year, the Federal Court had, on a technicality, allowed Khairy’s appeal against the initial dismissal and ordered the Court of Appeal to hear the merits of the minister’s appeal. – The Vibes, January 7, 2022