Let UM’s Azmi Sharom go

Azmi Sharom (centre) discussing with his lawyer, Gobind Singh Deo (right), at the Jalan Duta court yesterday. Sharom claimed trial in the Sessions Court over his remarks on the Perak constitutional crisis. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Afif Abd Halim, September 3, 2014.Dear honourable Attorney-General (A-G),

Please allow me this unusual mode of addressing you on a matter of urgent public importance.

You have charged my colleague, associate professor Dr Azmi Sharom, for sedition – a heinous crime indeed. It is reserved for those who intend to break up the fabric of society and its institutions.

And not for those who have spent their lifetime teaching students the value of law in society. Which is what Dr Azmi has been absorbed in doing these past few decades.

Mr A-G, you have vast prosecutorial discretion; but you will no doubt agree that this power has to be exercised even-handedly and with regard to wider values to advance the functioning of a democratic ethos.

This countenances animated and, sometimes, even “furious”, debate on issues of current critical concern – which characterises the Selangor MB crisis; and before it, the Perak MB crisis.

And in the midst of this crisis, many constitutional legal experts have been thrust; often, with media invites for their comments.

This is where a law teacher like Azmi is situated. And in this context his comments (which now form the subject of the charge) solicited and gratuitously provided.

Mr A-G, as you know, the mode by which majority support of the state legislative assembly for an MB is determined – has been the subject of active comment by law experts; no less because the Perak MB crisis broke with long-standing legal precedent.

For until then, as you are no doubt aware, our courts held that majority support had to be established by a vote in the legislative assembly.

The “new” Perak precedent approved by the Federal Court in Nizar v Zambry case followed a different mode; and it bears on the exercise of prerogative powers in resolving the Selangor MB crisis.

Mr A-G, surely you can agree that in a democracy, open airing of views is preferable to driving debate to cloistered whispers.

Imagine Mr A-G, the chilling effect your criminal charge of a law professor will have on academia? What impact will it register on students of universities and our quest to engender in them creative, innovative and open discourse? And, ultimately, whither academic freedom?

Are you going to charge all those who present divergent views – even stridently, even in ways others may disagree with – on matters that do not, by any stretch of the imagination, threaten our society?

Who will then be left out of being criminalised, or sedition-alised?

So, Mr AG: let my colleague go! – September 3, 2014.

* Gurdial Singh Nijar is a professor of law at the University of Malaya.