Arrest of Seri Muda's Shuhaimi slammed, BN warned of Egypt's example

Written by Wong Choon Mei, Malaysia Chronicle

PKR leaders decried the arrest of their colleague, Seri Muda seemblyman Shuhaimi Shafie, who has been released on bail but will be charged for sedition on Monday, advising Prime Minister Najib Razak to learn from Egypt's lesson that oppression was never the way to govern and injustice as overt as this would surely be answered by a people's uprising sooner or later.

"The authorities can go on using oppressive laws to silence the opposition but as we have seen in Egypt, charging someone under the Sedition Act is a cowardly way to deal with opposition and dissent. There's always a limit and consequences," PKR director of legal affairs Latheefa Koya told Malaysia Chronicle.

Regaining Selangor through all ways and means

Police had arrested Shuhaimi on Thursday and charged him under section 4(1) C of the Sedition Act 1948. He was later released him on a personal surety.

Last month, Shuhaimi was among those who spoke out against Najib's attempt to foist onto the Pakatan Rakyat administration in Selangor his own choice of a state secretary, Khusrin Munawi. Shuhaimi had posted his arguments against the move on his blog and also questioned the Selangor Sultan for allowing Najib to run roughshod over him.

Najib's Umno party immediately accused the PKR leader of committing treason against the Ruler. The Umno-owned Utusan newspaper also launched a concerted attack against Shuhaimi, and at one time piled so much pressure on him, speculation was rife that the party was trying to 'blackmail' him into defecting from PKR.

PKR or Parti Keadilan Rakyat is headed by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and Selangor is Malaysia's richest state. To crush the rising influence of the opposition, Najib has vowed to regain Selangor through all means - fair or foul.

Khusrin, an Umno stalwart, is widely regarded as his point-man planted into the Selangor state government to lead a revolt using phantom voters in the next election, and if that fails, to stir up unrest with help of a volunteer paramilitary cadre, RELA.

"This is ridiculous, a clear case of niat jahat or malicious intent. It is obvious the police is working on Umno's orders to harass Selangor and to trigger trouble in the state," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.

We must challenge the Sedition Act

To protest Umno' high-handed action and to show the Malaysian people that they must stand unbowed in the fight to regain their democratic rights, Pakatan leaders in Selangor led by chief minister Khalid Ibrahim tabled a motion in the state legislative assembly. But while they gained 34 votes versus Umno's 20, the motion still failed because state laws require a two-thirds majority from the 56-seat assembly.

Najib's administration has also been compared to the dictatorships that existed in Tunisia and Egypt. Now, as turmoil unfolds in the Muslim world and despots are being fallen by popular uprising, many Malaysians have already spoken up and forecast a similar trend taking place here.

Meanwhile, human rights lawyer N Surendran called the charges against Shuhaimi a "disgrace".

"This is a disgraceful prosecution by the Attorney General. It is politically motivated and oppressive. The AG has once again proven that he is nothing more than an agent of the BN," Surendran, who is also a PKR vice president, told Malaysia Chronicle.

"I have mounted a legal challenge to the legality of the Sedition Act in the P Uthayakumar case which is now pending before the Court of Appeal. The decision that will be made will have an important bearing on Shuhaimi' case."

Through the decades, the Umno-led BN government has used a spread of antiquated and draconian laws such as the Sedition Act, the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Internal Security Act and the Official Secrets Act to control freedom of expression, leash the media and cling to political power.