In a news report entitled Tokoh akademik, politik hadiri 'Pidato Kemerdekaan' Anwar , which appeared in the Aug 16 to 31, 2005 edition of Harakah, the organ of Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS), it was reported that I had attended Anwar Ibrahim's lecture at the Institut Kajian Dasar (IKD) on Aug 6.

This is absolutely untrue as anyone who was at that lecture would attest to. On the morning of Aug 6, I was in fact participating in the Hiroshima Day March organised by Aman Malaysia and the Physicians Against Nuclear War group within the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA).

This is not the first time that a report in a non-mainstream news medium had concocted a lie about my presence at a function or in a situation involving Anwar. Immediately after Anwar was released from prison on Sept 2, 2004, a report appeared in a website called Malaysia Today alleging that I had attempted to visit Anwar at his residence but was turned away by his supporters.

This baseless story was repeated in a couple of other websites. I sent out a legal notice demanding that the website responsible for the original defamation to apologise for spreading a lie and withdraw its story - which it did promptly.

It is sad that newspapers, websites and journals which are so critical about the alleged lack of ethics in the mainstream media have no compunctions about manufacturing untruths and concocting deliberate lies in pursuit of their own agendas.

This was one aspect of party politics which disillusioned me when I was in an opposition party a few years ago. It appears that nothing has changed.