The Kuala Lumpur High Court has fixed Nov 26 for a decision on whether Umno Youth chief and Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar can defend the RM100 million suit filed against him by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in 2008.

Justice Hue Siew Kheng, had made a decision on Aug 13 to preclude Khairy from defending himself as he and his lawyers had contumeliously failed since January this year to file the various documents like the witness list, statement of agreed facts, statement of dispute and opening statement which were supposed to be supplied to the court before trial.

The decision meant that Khairy would not be allowed to defend himself as his lawyers can only observe but not actively participate in the trial.

NONE Khairy’s lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah ( left ) submitted in Justice Hue’s chambers for one-and-a-half hours this afternoon that the Rembau MP should be allowed to defend himself as it does not prejudice Anwar.

This was despite Khairy not being able to file the necessary documents that were needed on time.

On the other side, senior lawyer Sulaiman Abdullah and J Leela are opposing Shafee’s application on the grounds that the defendant and the solicitors had failed to abide by the court’s orders, including not coming to court on an occasion to comply with the court order in supplying the documents.

Initially, today was fixed for hearing where Anwar was present in the morning.

However, Shafee had submitted the application on Nov 9 to set aside the Aug 13 order.

Shafee had applied to postpone case

Shafee had initially wanted to postpone the hearing of the application to another date which he initially suggested to be on Thursday. However, Shafee said he has another matter before the Federal Court as he is representing Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in the appeal against the UKM4 students.

The UKM4 students, led by Mohd Hilman Idham, were allegedly caught participating in the Hulu Selangor by-election where the Court of Appeal in a majority ruling ruled that Section 15 of the Universities and University Colleges Act was unconstitutional as freedom of expression is for all.

On learning this, Justice Hue fixed this afternoon for hearing as she pointed to Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria’s directive of not allowing postponements with ease.

Anwar had filed the suit against Khairy or KJ as he is popularly known on March 7, 2008, as the  then-Umno Youth deputy chief had allegedly uttered defamatory words and caused the posting on websites, including in Malaysiakini , a video clip entitled, ‘Anwar and kin no threat’.

The opposition leader claimed that the video clip on Malaysiakini contained defamatory words spoken by Khairy at a ceramah in Lembah Pantai in Kuala Lumpur on Feb 20, 2008. Khairy, in his statement of defence filed on Oct 8, 2010, said he relied on the defence of justification and qualified privilege.

On Aug 9, the Court of Appeal ordered the case to proceed for trial after Khairy failed to get the defamation suit summarily struck out.