Muhammad Rafique Rashid Ali said the law enacted during the colonial era only criminalised speech which has “seditious tendency(ies)” against the monarch or the government.
“An offence under section 3 of the law is only committed, among others, for utterances, statements that will bring hatred, contempt, excite disaffection against any ruler or government,” he told FMT.
He said the law could be abused against political opponents since the provision was excessively vague.
Rafique said there was now a possibility of pressure being applied to quell dissent and deviate from the original purpose of the law.
The lawyer was responding to a claim by Ainal Fattah that the Sedition Act could be applied on Shafie for ridiculing Najib as leader of the country.
Last week, Shafie commented that Sabahans did not know Najib until he had helped the latter rise politically in the state.
Rafique believes Ainal’s statement was issued to play down Shafie’s detention by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission in connection with a graft probe into the alleged skimming of up to RM1.5 billion in federal project allocations in Sabah.
Shafie, a former rural and regional development minister before he left Umno last year in protest against Najib’s handling of the 1MDB and the RM2.6 billion affairs, claims the arrest was politically motivated.