GEORGE TOWN, Aug 27 — Penang Deputy Chief Minister II P .Ramasamy said today he will be filing a defamation suit against PAS information chief Kamaruzaman Mohamad after the latter accused him of being a proxy to foreign terrorists.
The Penang lawmaker said he will be instructing his lawyer to prepare the notice of demand against Kamaruzaman.
“I have no choice but to file a defamation suit against him for making such baseless allegations against me,” he told the press here.
Yesterday, Kamaruzaman accused Ramasamy of being a proxy to foreign powers including terror groups.
He alleged that Ramasamy has links to militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, pointing to a photo of Ramasamy with Bagan Dalam assemblyman Satees Muniandy allegedly “worshiping the Kalashnikov emblem or AK-47 rifle” which he claimed was a ritual of the LTTE.
He also alleged that Ramasamy has close ties with Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) secretary-general, Gopalasamy Vaiko.
PAS deputy president Datuk Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man also brought up the topic today, asking for continued investigation against Ramasamy and four other ethnic Indian politicians for allegedly stirring ethnic tensions.
Ramasamy said he had explained numerous times that he was involved in peace negotiations in Sri Lanka just like how he was involved in peach negotiations in Colombia, Acheh and Mindanao.
He said there were over 100 police reports lodged against him for these false allegations linking him to LTTE and police have investigated and cleared him.
“How many times do they want to report this? How many times they want to investigate this? Why don’t they mention my involvement in peace negotiations between Gerakan Acheh Merdeka and the Indonesian government in 2015 or the peace negotiations in Mindanao, Philippines and my support for the Palestine Liberation Organisation?” he asked.
As for the picture of him allegedly “worshiping the Kalashnikov emblem or AK-47 rifle”, Ramasamy said it was a war memorial for genocide victims.
“I was not worshipping the AK-47, I was paying respects to the dead,” he said.
Regarding the alleged close ties to MDMK’s Gopalasamy Vaiko, Ramasamy pointed out that MDMK is a legitimate political party in India.
He added that Gopalasamy is an elected member of Parliament in India.
“I am considering lodging a police report against Kamaruzaman too for making these defamatory allegations against me,” he said.
He said it was obvious that these attacks against him were tactics to divert attention from the real issue, after the PAS-led Kelantan state government hosted fugitive televangelist Dr Zakir Naik.
“The real issue here is that PAS had hosted the preacher Dr Zakir Naik in Kelantan where he had questioned the loyalty of the Malaysian Indians and Chinese,” he said.
He said PAS should own up to this and explain why it had allowed the India-born televangelist to question the loyalty of non-Muslim Malaysians.
“Or is this PAS telling Malaysian Indians and Chinese that they are not loyal to the country?” he asked.
He said he will face any investigations against him regarding these allegations unlike PAS.
“I will not hide behind an international preacher,” he added.
