Pua to sue Zahid over Singapore arrest claim
By Shannon Teoh, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 — Tony Pua will sue Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi next week after the defence minister did not retract his allegation that the Petaling Jaya Utara MP was once arrested in Singapore.
“Then he can bring proof that I was arrested,” said the DAP publicity chief.
He said that he had given the Umno vice president 24 hours to apologise for claiming last Friday that Pua had been arrested in Singapore.
“However, three days later, I’ve not heard anything from him,” said Pua.
Zahid had told reporters that Pua had been arrested in Singapore and taken to court before being released, which barred him from public office there.
The minister also suggested that the DAP man was freed on account of his “good relationship” with “a certain office” there, an apparent reference to Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin’s earlier claim that Pua was a Singaporean agent.
The controversial Kinabatangan MP had levelled the accusation at Pua in Parliament on Wednesday.
Pua had claimed that he had never been charged for any civil or criminal case, “not even for jaywalking”, and strongly denied he had any relationship with the Singapore government or that he was interested in taking part in the republic’s politics.
He called the claims “baseless and slanderous lies”. Pua said he could not believe Zahid would “stoop so low” to divert public attention away from deals worth RM13.6 billion signed last month by his ministry.
