This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on July 14, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Kedah menteri besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir told the High Court that his father and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and former deputy prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had plans to topple Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

“I agree that my father tried to topple Najib and this plan started not in 2015, but much earlier in 2014,” he said in his testimony yesterday.

Mukhriz, 52, who is deputy president of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, was responding to a question from counsel Datuk Seri Jahaberdeen Mohamed Yunoos during cross-examination in the defamation suit brought by Mukhriz against Datuk Seri Tengku Sharifuddin Tengku Ahmad, the press secretary to the prime minister.

Asked by the lawyer whether he agreed that Dr Mahathir and Muhyiddin conspired to topple Najib, plaintiff Mukhriz said: “I do not want to use the word conspiracy, but they had a similar intention.”

Earlier, Mukhriz, in his witness statement presented to the court, said the media statements issued by defendant Tengku Sharifuddin had tarnished his reputation in the eyes of the public.

Mukhriz, who was represented by counsel Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla, was the first witness on the first day of the hearing of the suit.

Mukhriz filed the suit on May 3, 2016, claiming that Tengku Sharifuddin had issued two statements of a defamatory nature against him in April of that year.

The hearing before Justice Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim continues today. — Bernama