Utusan fails in bid to recuse judge in Anwar’s defamation suit

KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 — The High Court today rejected Utusan Malaysia’s bid to recuse the presiding judge in Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s RM100 million defamation suit against the newspaper.

Utusan had previously applied to recuse High Court judge Rosilah Yop from hearing the case, citing her description of Anwar as a “leading politician” in a separate trial.

But Rosilah dismissed the application today, stating that her description contained “no danger of bias” and that her remarks in the previous trial had no bearing on this on-going suit.

“The application is dismissed with RM5,000 (to be paid by the defendants to the plaintiffs),” she said in her ruling.

When filing the application last week, Utusan’s lawyer, Datuk Firoz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin, argued that judge Rosilah’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 had said.

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”.

Firoz told reporters today that Rosilah had granted a stay of trial proceedings until next Monday, to allow his team time to file an appeal against today's decision to the Court of Appeal.

Both parties must be present here next Tuesday to set a new date for the proper trial proceedings and Utusan's lawyers will have to update Rosilah about the application of appeal. 

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 at the time.