Thursday 28 Mar 2024
By
main news image

(Oct 13): The Kuala Lumpur High Court today dismissed the Home Ministry's application to stop The Edge Weekly and The Edge Financial Daily from resuming publication, pending the outcome of its appeal.

Senior federal counsel Alice Loke Yee Ching said judge Datuk Asmabi Mohamad ruled that there was no special circumstances to grant the stay.

"The judge said the publisher must not be deprived of the fruit of their successful litigation," she told reporters outside the court room in Kuala Lumpur.

Loke said the judge also felt that there would be no harm caused if both the newspapers continued to be published.?

Asmabi made the ruling in chambers, Loke said.

The judge also ordered costs of RM4,000 to the publisher, The Edge Communications Sdn Bhd.

Loke said the ministry would pursue its appeal to the Court of Appeal although the three-month suspension of the newspapers expired on October 26.

"The appeal is not academic. Should the appellate court overturn the High Court ruling, we need not pay damages," she said.

Loke said however that the appellate court had yet to fix a date to hear the appeal.

Lawyers Darryl Goon and Raja Eileen Soraya Raja Aman represented  the publisher.

On September 21, the judge revoked the home minister’s decision to suspend both publications for three months which was to expire on October 26.

Asmabi, in allowing the judicial review by the publisher, said the respondent (ministry) had breached Section 7(1) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984.

She said the respondent had not complied with procedural fairness as he did not give particulars of the suspension to the applicant.

The judge said the ministry had taken irrelevant consideration to impose a blanket ban of three months.

Asmabi also said the respondent should have been more careful to issue the order as it had affected the livelihoods of those employed by the applicant.

She said Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was "in doubt" on whether The Edge had published its articles by relying on allegedly unverified information on online news portals, especially The Sarawak Report. – The Malaysian Insider

      Print
      Text Size
      Share