It was responding to a claim by lawyer Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman, who is also a former Malaysia Airlines CEO, that any abolition of the Act needed the consent of the Rulers and that calling for its abolition itself was seditious.
“With respect, Tan Sri is wrong on both counts,” Hakam president Gurdial Singh Nijar said.
Gurdial said the act was enacted by the British long before Malaysia’s Parliament came into existence.
“Not being an act made by our Parliament, it cannot come within Article 10(4) of the Federal Constitution.
“Recently, both the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court confirmed this.
“The act comes instead under Article 162 which provides for laws existing before independence to continue in force.
“It is elementary that as the act does not fall under Article 10(4), there is no requirement for consent from the Conference of Rulers,” he said in a statement.
Gurdial also said it was not seditious to call for a repeal of the act.
“Such a call does not amount to questioning the sovereignty of the Rulers or the status of the national language or the quotas reserved for bumiputeras or natives.
“Our other existing laws suffice to protect these facets.
“Indeed, Section 3(2)(b) expressly permits pointing out defects in any legislation. And that must surely include the Sedition Act as a whole,” he said.
Stressing that the Sedition Act was an archaic and draconian law, Gurdial said it should be suspended and repealed “expeditiously”.
“It has the potential, as seen in the past, of being used as a political tool to silence outspoken critics of governmental wrongdoing.
“With the new mantle and ethos of the new government to expose misdeeds of those in high authority, the present party in power should have no hesitation in abandoning a law that has gone well past its expiry date,” he said.
In a separate statement, Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) adviser N Surendran described Aziz’s claim as a “gross misunderstanding and misreading of the Federal Constitution and the Sedition Act 1948”.
He said the claim by Aziz that the act was an “extraordinary” piece of legislation did not have legal or historical basis.