KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 — Former prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin today said he will leave it to his lawyers to handle a defamation lawsuit filed yesterday by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

In a brief statement, Perikatan Nasional chairman Muhyiddin confirmed that he had received papers pertaining to the lawsuit from Anwar's lawyer.

"As Datuk Seri Anwar has chosen to bring this matter to court, therefore I leave it to my lawyer to handle this case according to the law," Muhyiddin wrote in the statement which was carried on his Facebook page.

Yesterday, Anwar filed the defamation lawsuit against Muhyiddin over the latter's remarks in a December 5 election campaign speech, asking for the court to award him compensation and for court orders to stop Muhyiddin from saying, writing, publishing or distributing the same or similar defamatory words.

In his defamation lawsuit, Anwar claimed Muhyiddin had made false claims of him receiving RM15 million annually previously as the Selangor government's economic adviser.

Anwar also asserted that the Selangor state legislative assembly's Hansard had recorded the then Selangor mentri besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim's March 27, 2012 official answer, which stated Anwar's salary as Selangor state economic adviser was a symbolic sum of RM1 only.

Anwar said excerpts of Muhyiddin's December 5 speech at the "Grand Finale Perikatan Nasional Padang Serai” were published in a video by the TikTok account @beritakini8 which had gained 1.1 million views by December 7.

Anwar said Muhyiddin's speech was also published in its entirety in a video posted on December 8 on Muhyiddin's Facebook account which had garnered over 42,000 views as of yesterday.

Anwar's lawyers on December 7 issued a letter of demand to Muhyiddin to ask the latter to pay compensation, retract and apologise for his campaign comments, and to promise not to repeat the same words. The lawyers had said failure to comply with the demands would result in legal action.

Anwar noted that Muhyiddin had through his lawyers replied in a December 9 letter to deny that the remarks were defamatory against Anwar.