Mkini Dotcom Sdn Bhd, which runs the news portal Malaysiakini and its editor-in-chief have filed an application to set aside the leave obtained by the Attorney-General (A-G) to commence committal proceedings against them.
Lawyer A Surendra Ananth, representing the two, said he filed the application yesterday.
He said the Federal Court has fixed July 2 to hear his client’s application to set aside the leave order obtained by the A-G.
Surendra Ananth said the hearing date was fixed when the matter came up for case management before a Federal Court deputy registrar which was conducted via e-review today.
He also said the hearing of his clients’ application to set aside the leave has been fixed on the same day as the contempt proper hearing.
Senior federal counsel M Kogilambigai appeared for the A-G in the case management proceedings.
On June 17, the Federal Court three-member bench allowed A-G Tan Sri Idrus Harun’s ex parte application for leave to commence committal proceedings against Mkini Dotcom and Malaysiakini’s editor-in chief Steven Gan.
The bench allowed the leave application on grounds that a prima facie case for contempt was established.
The application was in relation to five comments on an article published by Malaysiakini on June 9 entitled “CJ orders all courts to be fully operational from July 1”.
It was argued by senior federal counsel Alice Loke Yee Ching during court proceedings in the Federal Court on June 17 that the news portal allowed comments deemed to be offensive and embarrassing to the judiciary to be posted on the comment section of the article.
In his affidavit-in-support, Gan said that, due to the high volume of such comments, it was not possible for Malaysiakini to directly moderate comments and thus, it had to rely on a peer reporting process.
As only registered Malaysiakini subscribers were permitted to post comments, they were required to agree to the portal’s terms and conditions on postings before they could comment.
As a matter of law, neither Malaysiakini nor he could be considered as having published the comments such that their publication on the portal can be attributed to them, Gan said.
“It is incumbent on the applicant to demonstrate to this honourable court that the first respondent and I had intentionally published the comments. This was plainly not the case here as the comments were by third parties,” Gan said.
Gan further said that similar to other online news portals, readers of and subscribers to Malaysiakini were at liberty to comment on news items reported in order to generate public discussion on matters of public interest to allow informed views to be formed on particular issues.
He said their solicitors also advised that the leave application should have been filed at the High Court rather than at the Federal Court.
“The subject of the comments concerned the judiciary in general and not this honourable court (the Federal Court) nor was it a specific decision of this honourable court.
“In filing the leave application before this honourable court, the respondents have been unfairly deprived of their right to appeal,” he said.
The contempt proceedings against Malaysiakini has attracted concerns from various quarters, among them the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) which expressed worry that it would lead to more instances of media censorship.