KUALA LUMPUR – Perkasa and its founding president, Datuk Ibrahim Ali, have been ordered to pay RM150,000 in damages to DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng over defamatory remarks published in October 2011.
A three-judge Federal Court panel today upheld the high court decision in a 2-1 ruling.
Judges Datuk Nallini Pathmanathan and Datuk Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal ruled in Lim’s favour, while Datuk Abdul Rahman Sebli went the other way.
In the majority judgment summary, Harmindar said the high court was justified in awarding the RM150,000 compensation, and that the amount is not excessive.
He added that a public officer, when suing as an individual, be it in a personal or official capacity, is not prohibited from mounting a defamation action.
Rahman, in his minority judgment, said Lim’s appeal should be dismissed, and that the suit was flawed from the start.
He said Lim was not represented by a government legal officer as required under the Government Proceedings Act 1956, nor did the private lawyer appearing for him have a licence from the state legal adviser.
Lim was then Penang chief minister.
Last September, the court heard his appeal against Perkasa and Ibrahim.
Perkasa had accused Lim of being a “traitor”, alleging that he revealed the country’s secrets to the Singapore government.
In 2012, he sued Perkasa, Ibrahim, the group’s then information chief Ruslan Kassim, and publishers The New Straits Times Press and Utusan Melayu.
Upon Ruslan’s death last September, Lim withdrew his suit against the deceased.
On December 21, 2016, the Court of Appeal allowed appeals by Perkasa and the publishers to overturn the high court decision ordering them to pay RM150,000 in damages to Lim.
It ruled that Lim could not sue the media for defamation in his official capacity.
However, in 2018, the publishers agreed to pay him RM200,000 each in damages. This was due to a Federal Court ruling in September that year in another case, that the government could sue for defamation. – The Vibes, February 26, 2021
