Hamzah cited the headline of a report by a little-known Italian news outlet called Agenzia Nova, which referred to Anwar as Malaysia’s “first full-blown homosexual elected prime minister in an Islamic country”.

This prompted Pakatan Harapan (PH) MPs to urge Hamzah to retract his statement.

Hamzah dismissed their calls and told them to let him finish his sentence, saying he wanted to ask Anwar if he will take legal action against Agenzia Nova.

“Listen to me first. They (Agenzia Nova) are insulting the prime minister. Strict action must be taken. The government bears the responsibility to inform the whole world that (Anwar) had already been pardoned by the King.”

Hamzah pointed out that even Umno had now “accepted” Anwar as prime minister after being pardoned in 2018.

“It’s not an issue. I agree, too, and I congratulate (Anwar) for becoming prime minister.”

He then trained his guns on the government for policing content on social media platform TikTok over allegedly racially-charged content that had implicated Perikatan Nasional (PN) supporters as perpetrators.

Hamzah said the government’s actions went against PH’s election pledge to ensure media freedom.

He also urged Anwar to act as a prime minister instead of an opposition leader, adding “I am the opposition leader now”.

Later, Lim Guan Eng (PH-Bagan) accused Hamzah of resorting to personal attacks against the prime minister by bringing up the report by Agenzia Nova, which he described as an unknown news outlet.

We are live on Telegram, subscribe here for breaking news and the latest announcements.