The three-man panel, led by Justice Zawawi Salleh, ruled today that the order by the minister was unreasonable.
“Based on the minister’s affidavit, the incidents like ‘stamping on images of leaders’ and ‘distribution for the Merdeka celebration’, took place only after the order was gazetted on August 24 last year,” he said.
Earlier, he heard arguments from lawyer Edmund Bon for the Bersih 2.0 steering committee and senior federal counsel Suzana Atan for the Home Minister.
The other judges on the panel, Justice Abdul Rahman Sebli and Asmabi Mohamad, both concurred with Zawiwi, and allowed Bersih 2.0’s appeal and quashed the Home Minister’s decision.
“The minister’s decision thus has no effect,” Zawawi added.
No order was made to cost.
Rahman will write the panel’s grounds of judgment.
Bersih 2.0 chairman Maria Chin Abdullah, treasurer Masjaliza Hamzah and national representative Nadiah Fadwa Fikri filed a judicial review last year, challenging the Home Minister and government, over the ban on Bersih 4’s paraphernalia.
The ban was enforced in August last year under section 7(1) of the Printing Presses and the Publication Act (PPPA).
The section states that anything described in the Schedule was absolutely prohibited throughout Malaysia, if they are likely to be prejudicial to public order, security, prejudicial to national interest and contrary to any law.
The Schedule refers to printing, importation, production, reproduction, publishing, sale, issuance, circulation, distribution or possession of publication.
The High Court had on February this year dismissed Bersih 2.0’s challenge against the Home Ministry’s decision to ban Bersih 4 materials.
The court ruled the minister, in issuing the ban under section 7(1) of the PPPA, had exercised the discretion he had.
The Bersih 4 rally was held last year over two days, August 29 and 30, around Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, and 70 cities worldwide