The Kuala Lumpur High Court today revoked the Home Ministry’s decision to suspend the printing license for The Edge Financial Daily and The Edge Weekly, effectively allowing the business news provider to resume putting out its print editions.
Presiding judge Asmabi Mohamad ruled that the Home Minister, Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, had breached Section 7 (1) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 in issuing the gag order on the newspapers’ publishers.
“The respondent did not comply with procedural fairness as he did not give particulars of suspension to the applicant,” she said, as quoted by The Malaysian Insider.
The judge added that before imposing the three-month printing ban, Zahid had taken irrelevant facts into consideration.
Judge Asmabi said Zahid, who is now also Deputy Prime Minister, and the Home Ministry should have exercised more care in issuing the gag order, as the decision adversely affected the livelihood of those employed by The Edge.
On July 27, the Home Ministry ordered a freeze on the printing license of both The Edge Financial Daily and The Edge Weekly for three months. The Edge‘s online portal was unaffected by the order.
The ban was imposed after The Edge had published several investigative reports focusing on sovereign fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and the scandals surrounding it, Malaysian billionaire Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, and Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Senior federal counsel Alice Loke Yee Ching told reporters that she had to take instructions from her superiors before a decision was made to appeal.
“We have a month to do so.”
