Activist shrugs off lawyer’s call to charge her with contempt

KUALA LUMPUR: Activist Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan yesterday shrugged off calls by Umno lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah to charge her with contempt of court for criticising the judiciary.

Amiga said Shafee should instead reflect if his statements against opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim have undermined the court system.

“I am not intimidated in the slightest by the call by Tan Sri Shafee for the AG to charge me for contempt. I have no problems facing it if indeed it comes to pass that I am charged. Let the truth emerge,” she said in a statement carried by The Malaysian Insider yesterday.

Shafee, who prosecuted for the government i n Anwar’s sodomy appeal, was reported by Utusan Malaysia’s weekend edition as saying that Ambiga was wrong in saying that the Barisan Nasional (BN) had made a “terrible mistake” by jailing Anwar.

Such a statement had insulted the courts by implying that the judiciary and BN, the coalition which is in federal power, were the same, Shafee told Mingguan Malaysia yesterday.

“I suggest that the Attorney-General take action,” he was quoted as saying yesterday.

“When such a remark is made, should we not answer? If we don’t answer, the people will believe it,” he told the Umno-owned Malay daily.

Ambiga had on Friday criticised Shafee for continuing to attack Anwar even after the case had been settled with the Federal Court’s verdict on February 10.

The apex court upheld his sodomy conviction and five-year jail sentence.