A good lesson for all of us to be wary of our words

Once again I have stated on how im­por­tant it is for us including politicians to be care­ful when hurl­ing al­le­ga­tions and ex­press­ing opin­ions, to avoid defama­tion law­suits.

I mentioned this matter to our Media friends who asked for my reactions and comments on the defama­tion suit by the Sarawak government against DAP Sarawak’s chair­man, YB Chong Jen. Of course I am pleased with the Fed­eral Court’s de­ci­sion in dis­miss­ing YB Chong’s ap­pli­ca­tion to get the apex court to re­view its own de­ci­sion.

I have noted that among the many things Chong had con­tended was that the gov­ern­ment can­not sue an in­di­vid­ual.

The Fed­eral Court has given its de­ci­sion in favour of the gov­ern­ment and that the gov­ern­ment, just like any in­di­vid­ual, can sue for defama­tion.

The de­ci­sion also showed us that politi­cians or in­di­vid­u­als have to be wary of what they want to say. They can­not just ac­cuse peo­ple or slan­der or say defam­a­tory words against the gov­ern­ment or an in­di­vid­ual.

Similarly, in the event that any­one who wants to trans­gress to that path of de­fam­ing any­one or the gov­ern­ment, they will have to pay the price for it,” he said yes­ter­day.

YB Chong is fortunate of not losing his par­lia­men­tary seat because this case is a civil suit.

But the cost of RM100,000 has been placed on him to pay to the state gov­ern­ment. That should wake him up a bit to watch his mouth.

During the media interview I also expressed the opinionthat the defama­tion suit will not weaken Demo­cratic Ac­tion Party (DAP) as there will be many who will be sym­pa­this­ing with YB Chong, just as they sym­pa­thise with for­mer Pu­jut assem­bly­man Dr Ting Tiong Choon.

We just have to do our part by work­ing hard on the ground...the pub­lic will un­der­stand.

Just for the record, the Fed­eral Court has recently dis­missed YB Chong’s ap­pli­ca­tion to get the apex court to re­view its own de­ci­sion. The Fed­eral Court in Pu­tra­jaya, presided by Court of Ap­peal Pres­i­dent Datuk Ro­hana Yusuf, sit­ting with judges Datuk Abang Iskan­dar Abang Hashim, Datuk Nallini Path­manathan, Datuk Ver­non Ong Lam Kiat and Datuk Zaleha Yusuf, unan­i­mously agreed there was no merit in Chong’s ap­pli­ca­tion and that the Fed­eral Court could not re­view its own de­ci­sion.