THE Pakatan Harapan government worked hard to abolish the sedition act during the 22 months it was in power before it was ousted, along with all its efforts to get rid of the draconian law, outgoing MP Sivarasa Rasiah said.

The PKR veteran said the efforts would have been realised were it not for the toppling of the fledgling government and opposition from the royals who wanted to avoid criticism.

The former Sungai Buloh lawmaker was speaking at an event organised by Gerak Budaya last night on policies.

“Some institutional changes did not happen because of pushback from the system. Take the sedition act, for example. We were all in to repeal the law and the amendments were straightforward.

“But then the pushback came from the monarchy who wanted some protection from comments against them. This led to a deadlock and there were delays after delays.

“We tried to finetune (the amendments) but too bad, our government then fell,” said Sivarasa.

Sivarasa was dropped as a PKR candidate for GE15 due to health reasons, PH chairman Anwar Ibrahim had said yesterday.

PH’s failure to repeal the sedition act when it had the opportunity to do so was slammed by then Bar Council president Ragunath Kesavan.

“Even the (former) attorney-general (Tommy Thomas) did not do anything; the ministers did not do anything,” Ragunath had said.

“As a result, freedom of expression is being questioned again. Now we pay the same price, again. Regardless of the change of government, the issue is still the same… freedom of expression.”

PH had promised in its election manifesto to abolish the sedition act.

Sivarasa said although PH did not manage to abolish the law, it had managed to introduce several reforms such as anti-fake news act 2018.

The forum last night was attended by another outgoing PKR lawmaker Maria Chin Abdullah and Muslim civil society group Ikram senior director Zaid Kamaruddin.

Maria, former MP for Petaling Jaya, told the forum that the next federal government must address poverty in the country.

Citing PJ as a case study, the former Bersih chairman said there are hundreds of thousands of poor families in the area that cannot afford to put food on the table.

“Poverty is a key issue. In the pos-MCO period there are still families struggling to put food on the table and we are not just talking about the B40 but also the M40 group.

“Many have lost their jobs; many are holding part-time jobs and some are still waiting to get reasonable jobs. Recovery is slow, prices of goods have increased because we rely on imports.

“In PJ, more than 600,000 people are living below the poverty line and if the PM says no families would be left behind under Keluarga Malaysia, these are the families that have been left behind,” said the activist turned politician.

Maria has been replaced by two-term Pahang assemblyman Lee Chean Chung in Petaling Jaya.

PKR’s reasoning for dropping Chin was that the constituency required a “highly educated Chinese” who is also younger, and has the energy to liase with handle civil society groups.

In 2018, Chin won the  Petaling Jaya constituency on a PKR ticket with 78,984 votes against Barisan Nasional‘s Chew Hian Tat (21,847) and Gagasan Sejahtera‘s Noraini Hussin. – November 4, 2022.