KUALA LUMPUR – DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang is suing Kepala Batas MP Siti Mastura Muhammad not just to clear his name but because she has become a “national disgrace” despite being an MP and holding a doctorate.
He also labelled Siti Mastura a “media illiterate”, and said it was shocking that she was no different than “what the PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang had done”.
In addition, Kit Siang recommended that Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek introduce media literacy in schools so that schoolchildren, not only those in universities, do not become media illiterates.
He added that this is so they “can discern what is propaganda, censorship, bias, lies, and hate speech”.
Kit Siang had repeatedly demanded that Hadi produce evidence to substantiate claims that DAP and Kit Siang were anti-Malay, anti-Islam, anti-royalty, and that they were communists and were spreading Islamophobia.
Previously, DAP vice-chair and Seputeh MP Teresa Kok said she would initiate legal action against Siti Mastura after the PAS lawmaker failed to apologise and retract statements claiming that certain DAP figures were related to one another, as well as ex-Malayan Communist Party leader Chin Peng.
On November 14, Siti Mastura’s lawyer Ahmad Amzar Ahmad Azlan confirmed that she had received four letters of claim, from Kok, Kit Siang, his son and party chairman Lim Guan Eng, and Guan Eng’s wife Betty Chew.
According to copies of the letter of demand shared with the media, Kok is seeking RM10 million in damages from Siti Mastura.
The legal letter also said, among others, that Siti Mastura’s slanderous statements against Kok gave the impression to the general public that Kok is “affiliated to a proscribed communist party; espouses and propagates communist ideologies; is an enemy of the state and is disloyal to the country”.
Siti Mastura’s statement was previously recorded at Bukit Aman after police reports were lodged against her for claiming that Guan Eng and Kit Siang were related to the former Singapore prime minister – the late Lee Kuan Yew – and the long-deceased Chin Peng.
She made the claim in a speech at a PAS programme in Kemaman, Terengganu, on November 4, of which video is available. In her speech, she also alleged that Guan Eng’s wife and Kok are cousins.
Siti Mastura also claimed Guan Eng and his father were related to other DAP figures – party secretary-general and Transport Minister Anthony Loke, Local Government and Development Minister Nga Kor Ming and Beruas MP Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham. – November 20, 2023