Guan Eng wins defamation case again; PAS Perak chief required to pay RM250,000 and apologise

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 6 — DAP chairman Lim Guan Eng again won in his defamation case against Perak PAS chief Razman Zakaria, with the Court of Appeal reportedly upholding a High Court decision which had ruled in favour of Lim.

According to news portal Free Malaysia Today (FMT), the Court of Appeal today dismissed Razman’s appeal and upheld the High Court decision which had ordered Razman to make a public apology and pay RM250,000 in compensation.

Previously in March last year, High Court then-judicial commissioner Datuk Amarjeet Singh Serjit Singh ordered Razman to pay the RM250,000 damages, to make a public apology on his Facebook page over a defamatory statement and to not repeat the statement on Facebook in the future.

Lim, who is also Bagan MP, had in 2018 filed the defamation lawsuit against Razman over the latter’s November 18, 2017 Facebook post which was allegedly defamatory against Lim. Lim was the Penang chief minister at the time of the 2017 Facebook post.

Razman was alleged to have claimed that Lim appeared to be supporting a ban on the wearing of headscarves by hotel workers and purportedly defending it as being the right of hotel operators and that Penang allegedly fully supported it.

At the High Court where the defamation case was heard, Lim had reportedly said in his witness statement in court that Razman’s Facebook post was offensive, misleading and untrue, and that he had never made any statement during his tenure as Penang chief minister to support any policy to prohibit Muslim female staff at hotel reception counters from wearing headscarves.

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