Winding up the debate on the royal speech in the Dewan Rakyat, he said the investigation was being carried out into Teo’s statement allegedly criticising vernacular schools under Section 505 of the Penal Code for public mischief and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998.

Section 505 of the Penal Code pertains to statements conducive to public mischief, while Section 233 of the CMA stipulates offences for using network facilities to transmit communication deemed to be offensive or that could cause annoyance to another person.

Saifuddin said this in response to Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal (PN-Machang), who claimed that no police report had been lodged against Merdeka Times owner Firdaus Wong and Teo to warrant an investigation.

Lim Guan Eng (PH-Bagan) then said that several police reports had already been lodged against the academic in Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

Teo, a former professor of ethnic studies and current senior fellow of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s ethnic studies institute, had been criticised by Teresa Kok (PH-Seputeh) last week, who alleged that he made inflammatory comments about the Chinese community.

Teo had said in a Merdeka Times video that the Chinese community thought lowly of the Malays and that vernacular schools were one of the obstacles in the way of national unity.

Firdaus, meanwhile, claimed that he had been summoned by the police for publishing Teo’s controversial remarks.

Meanwhile, Saifuddin also called for a stop to the debate in Parliament on vernacular schools, citing the recent Federal Court decision allowing their continued existence.

In November, the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that it is constitutional for vernacular schools to use Mandarin or Tamil as their medium of instruction.

The Federal Court then dismissed a leave application by two Malay-Muslim interest groups to set aside the Court of Appeal’s ruling.