Umno vice-president Shafie Apdal has thrown his support behind party president Najib Abdul Razak for his possible defamation suit against news portal Malaysiakini , according to KiniTV.

Shafie took issue with comments by the news portal's readers questioning how much money was spent on bringing back disgruntled Terengganu assemblypersons back into BN's fold.

"People are entitled to comment but it should not be used as a headline.

"If the comments are in a small column without much prominence, we can understand, but Malaysiakini used it as a headline," he said at a press conference via Skype at Utusan Malaysia's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur this afternoon.

Shafie, who is currently in the United States, stressed that there was never any offer of money or positions to bring back the disgruntled state assemblypersons.

He added that had Umno-owned Utusan carried such reports, it too would have faced similar actions from disgruntled quarters.

On Thursday, Najib and Umno, through law firm Hafarizam Wan & Aisha Mubarak, demanded a retraction from Malaysiakini of two "Yoursay" articles, a compilation of readers' comments on  their handling of the Terengganu crisis and an unconditional apology.

In particular, they were upset over six readers' comments on two articles entitled ‘A case of the PM reaping what he sows’ and ‘How much will Najib spend to keep Terengganu?’.

The spotlight fell on Najib after Kijal state assemblyperson Ahmad Said lashed out at the prime minister and threatened to bring down the Terengganu government when abruptly replaced as menteri besar on Monday.

Ahmad together with Ajil state assemblyperson Ghazali Taib and Bukit Besi state assemblyperson Roslee Daud subsequently quit Umno, declaring themselves independents.

The move saw BN losing its majority in the Terengganu state assembly with only 14 representatives to Pakatan Rakyat's 15, aside from the three Umno-turned-independent state assemblypersons.

However, the crisis was defused in less than 48 hours after Najib and Ahmad apologised to each other in a private conversation over what the latter said was a "misunderstanding" and the trio retracted their resignations.