Seditious Acts

It seems that RPK is being charged with sedition. I find that rather curious simply because I’m not sure if he had actually committed any act of sedition. According to the article in TheStar, he had written a blog entry entitled “Let’s send the Altantuya murderers to hell”. In that entry, he had implicated the involvement of our DPM and his wife in the scandal.

Alright, obviously RPK should not get away with randomly accusing people (especially prominent people) of being implicated in criminal offences, especially when the courts have not mentioned anything to such end. Regardless of what had transpired, it is generally considered wrong to fitnah anyone. As I understand it, this is an even more heinous crime than murder, in Islam.

This obviously qualifies as an act of libel. If our DPM or his wife feels slighted in any way, they should very well, sue RPK’s ass off in court for libel. They could very well bankrupt the man seeing that they are very prominent people, with fragile reputations to protect. So, the damages could be astronomical. However, it is rather curious to try to get RPK under the Sedition Act.

According to Wikipedia, under section 3(1), those acts defined as having a seditious tendency are acts with a tendency:

(a) to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against any Ruler or against any Government;
(b) to excite the subjects of the Ruler or the inhabitants of any territory governed by any government to attempt to procure in the territory of the Ruler or governed by the Government, the alteration, otherwise than by lawful means, of any matter as by law established;
(c) to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the administration of justice in Malaysia or in any State;
(d) to raise discontent or disaffection amongst the subjects of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or of the Ruler of any State or amongst the inhabitants of Malaysia or of any State;
(e) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Malaysia; or
(f) to question any matter, right, status, position, privilege, sovereignty or prerogative established or protected by the provisions of part III of the Federal constitution or Article 152, 153 or 181 of the Federal Constitution.

As I understand it, an act of sedition can only be committed against a government or ruler. You cannot commit a seditious act against a fellow citizen. So, reading the various definitions of sedition, I still don’t really know which one applies in this case. Obviously, I’m not a lawyer. So, I surrender to the better judgement of the legal people in these matters. However, it still smacks of a strong arm scare tactic in this case. Someone needed to shut RPK up for good and decided to invoke the heftiest penalties on him.

Seeing that RPK has been rather mischievous when it comes to the law, I doubt that he can expect any leniency from the magistrate. However, I do hope that things go well for him because he really seems to have a lot of insight into the inner workings of Malaysian politics. It would be a waste to see him go. I did enjoy reading some of his more flamboyant entries.