KUALA LUMPUR: Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad (pic) has submitted a petition to Parliament to debate the contentious Sedition Act after Putrajaya toned down its intention to do away with the legislation and embarked on a sedition blitz against critics.

The PAS lawmaker expressed hope that Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia would allow the issue to be debated after question time on Monday.

“The petition carries the signatures of 3,005 people requesting Parliament to urge the federal government to repeal the Act and drop all charges under that law,” he said at the Parliament lobby yesterday.

On the same day, a few hundred people were expected to march from nearby Padang Merbok to Parliament to hand over a memorandum calling for the law to be repealed.

The signatories in the petition protested against the use of the “cruel” and “undemocratic” legislation which has a wide interpretation and hence, allowed its easy abuse.

Putrajaya is still mulling over whether to keep the Sedition Act or replace it altogether, saying it has yet to draft any new law despite the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s promise to do so two years ago, and again in September.

The government had pledged to listen to all views after Malay rights groups, Umno leaders and certain segments of the public insisted that sedition laws should remain and that they would withdraw support if it was repealed.

In September, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said the Attorney-General’s Chambers would draft the National Harmony Act only after principal and basic issues were decided.

“Any draft laws prepared by groups other than the Attorney-General’s Chambers are not valid and cannot be accepted,” the PMO said in a statement.

Putrajaya in recent months embarked on a sedition blitz against opposition leaders, a journalist, an academic, activists and two ulama in an attempt to silence dissent.

This caused critics to accuse the prime minister of back-pedalling on his pledge to repeal the law. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 21, 2014.