KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 3 — PAS owes an explanation to those who donated towards Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s legal costs to sue Sarawak Report, said Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan.
The former Malaysian Bar president pointed out that Hadi had retained the Carter-Ruck law firm in the UK, whose services she said could not have been cheap.
The firm’s website cites a report by The Guardian that called it a “top London law firm”.
“Never start a battle you cannot finish! You now owe it to the Malaysian people or at least your members to account for the money spent and for its origins,” she wrote on Twitter today.
PAS announced on Friday that Hadi had settled his lawsuit against Sarawak Report and its editor, Clare Rewcastle-Brown, out of court.
He previously sued over the website’s article alleging that several PAS leaders received RM90 million in order to covertly support Umno and Barisan Nasional ahead of the 14th general election.
PAS has been mocked over the out-of-court settlement but has insisted that it still obtained a moral victory despite Sarawak Report continuing to carry the offending article on its website.
Earlier today, PAS deputy president Datuk Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man claimed his party was not concerned that the report remained accessible to the public by saying it was already public knowledge.
According to the PAS announcement on Friday, the settlement involved no order as to costs and bound both parties to confidentiality.
Hadi had sued in 2017 over the report published the previous year.
Ambiga had been tangentially linked to the case after Rewcastle-Brown claimed the former to be the source of her information for the RM90 million claim.
