Go full distance with reforms, Ambiga tells Najib

Ambiga said the planned changes still do not allow for the freedoms of the press and assembly.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 19 — Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan today urged the prime minister to include street demonstrations and a complete dismantling of newspaper licensing laws in his reforms pledge, saying changes mooted now were still “not satisfactory”.

“The announcement on the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) in my view is not satisfactory because as long as the power still rests in the Home Minister to revoke licences, there is no difference whether it is a yearly licence or whether you give a licence that can be revoked,” the Bersih 2.0 chairman told reporters after a court hearing to challenge the ban on the electoral reforms movement today.

Peanuts, not sweeping reforms

Let’s not be fooled, people. The changes Najib announced are merely cosmetic, and will have to be passed in Parliament first before they become effective.

PEANUTS. That’s what Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s so-called “sweeping reforms” are. They hardly amount to a political transformation.

While it’s cheering to note that the Internal Security Act (ISA) will be repealed – finally, after our many years of waiting – and that the Emergency proclamations are to be lifted – a decision that is decades overdue – it’s disturbing to be told that they will be replaced by two new laws aimed at preventing subversion and safeguarding public order.