Utusan wants to recuse judge for calling Anwar 'leading politician'

KUALA LUMPUR, April 14 — Utusan Malaysia today sought to recuse the High Court judge hearing Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's RM100 million defamation suit against the newspaper, citing her description of him as a “leading politician” in a separate trial.

The newspaper's lawyer, Datuk Firoz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin, argued that High Court judge Rosilah Yop's use of the words during the opposition leader's defamation suit against blogger Wan Mohd Azri Wan Derus, who wrote as “Papagomo”, suggested a possible conflict here.

“… in this case you will be asked by us to state that Anwar Ibrahim is not fit to be the leader opposition,” he said.

“We are saying that you will placed in an embarrassing position if you were to rule otherwise in this case,” he added.

In the trial and subsequent judgement on February 28, Rosilah ordered Wan Mohd Azri to pay RM800,000 in damages to Anwar, after finding that the former's blog entries damaged Anwar's reputation.

Rosilah had then referred to Anwar as the opposition leader and “a leading politician at the national and international level”.

Firoz added that Rosilah held that Anwar is a person of good character and reputation, a view that he argued exposed the judge to the “real danger of bias”.

“We have also stated in our statement of defence that the plaintiff (Anwar) is a threat to national security, in cahoots with the enemies of the state, a traitor and involved in terrorism,” said Firoz.

“ ... but the character and reputation of the plaintiff has been decided on the previous judgement,” he added.

The Umno lawyer added that Anwar “does not have a reputation to be tarnished”.

Anwar’s counsel, Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, rebutted the challenge against Rosilah’s previous decision by pointing out that a judgement from a separate cannot be the only grounds for a recusal.

“Here’s the test, the danger of bias should not allow parties to go on judge shopping.

“While justice has to be done another hallowed principle is judicial impartiality,” said Ambiga.

After hearing the arguments Rosilah fixed to decide on the application on Friday.

In March last year, Anwar sued both Utusan Malaysia and news channel TV3 for — RM100 million — over reports suggesting he was behind the Sulu invasion of Lahad Datu in Sabah then.