He pointed out that former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has now said that the Sedition Act should not be repealed, saying that if Najib does not go ahead with the law's abolition, it would give the "perception that Dr Mahathir is running the country".
Ida Lim, MM
Open discord among Cabinet members over the prime minister's pledge to roll out laws to broaden civil liberties is risking Datuk Seri Najib Razak's administration being tagged a "flip-flop" government, political analysts have said.
Hardliners within Umno, the Barisan Nasional (BN) government's anchor party, appear to be influencing the prime minister (picture) to reverse his pledge to repeal the Sedition Act, and to maintain preventive detention clauses in other security laws that critics say is choking the growth of democracy here.
Members of Najib's Cabinet have been issuing conflicting statements over the abolition of the colonial-era sedition law while Home Minister Datuk Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has been pushing to provide the authorities preventive detention powers lost following the repeal of the Emergency Ordinance, barely a year after it was removed.
Dr Andrew Aeria, an academic from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), said events of late paint a picture of a government that allegedly "lacks credibility and inconsistency", stressing that "your word is your bond".
"If they do an about-turn now, basically you are telling everyone that you are a government, a Cabinet that can't be trusted to keep its word," he told The Malay Mail Online.
"If you keep flip-flopping, the question is who is running the country?" he asked.
He pointed out that former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has now said that the Sedition Act should not be repealed, saying that if Najib does not go ahead with the law's abolition, it would give the "perception that Dr Mahathir is running the country".
"You are the prime minister in the Cabinet, you can't do this kind of flip-flopping; if you keep flip-flopping, this is not good for investors," Aeria added.
Last July, Najib announced that the Sedition Act would be replaced with a National Harmony Act.
But Ahmad Zahid has since said the law will not be repealed, with Cabinet colleague Datuk S. Subramaniam adding that the prime minister was only making a suggestion.
Wan Saiful Wan Jan, the founder of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), said the recent developments reinforces the people's perception of Najib's administration as a flip-flopping government, while saying that the Cabinet lacks a united stand over such issues.
"It's a worrying trend when a minister says something and another minister says something else...The government is clearly divided," the chief executive of the political and economic think-tank told The Malay Mail Online.
A day after Ahmad Zahid said the government was only looking at amending the law instead of repealing it, Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz came out to insist on Monday that the Cabinet had decided to abolish the Sedition Act.
Wan Saiful attributed the reason for the apparent clashes to the Umno elections later this year, saying leaders were now jockeying for spots ahead of the internal polls.
"They may be debating specific legislation, but really they are positioning themselves for Umno elections, who can be more radical, more bold than the others," he said.
Although it was pointed out that the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration also included other component parties, the analysts noted that Umno remained the dominant force when it came to setting policy.
But Wan Saiful also said that Umno conservatives were not the only ones in the way of Najib's reforms, saying that the police would back laws similar to the Emergency Ordinance, while some would defend the continued existence of the Sedition Act ostensibly to ensure the protection of the monarchy from insults, among other things.
"All these groups, they are not necessarily hardliners in Umno," he said, adding that Najib has to convince everyone to support the legal reforms.
Wan Saiful said the recent debate over the Sedition Act also revealed the Prime Minister's grip on power as being challenged by others, saying the events can be both beneficial and unhealthy.
"Yes, healthy because definitely the powers of prime minister needs to be checked and balanced.
"It's also unhealthy because they are debating this publicly and the counter-proposals to what Najib has been deciding is actually not progressive," Wan said.
Political analyst Shaharudin Badaruddin similarly suggested that the shift in position could be caused by pressure from hardliners within the government or the ruling party as well as the Umno polls.
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Open discord among Cabinet members over the prime minister's pledge to roll out laws to broaden civil liberties is risking Datuk Seri Najib Razak's administration being tagged a "flip-flop" government, political analysts have said.
Hardliners within Umno, the Barisan Nasional (BN) government's anchor party, appear to be influencing the prime minister (picture) to reverse his pledge to repeal the Sedition Act, and to maintain preventive detention clauses in other security laws that critics say is choking the growth of democracy here.
Members of Najib's Cabinet have been issuing conflicting statements over the abolition of the colonial-era sedition law while Home Minister Datuk Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has been pushing to provide the authorities preventive detention powers lost following the repeal of the Emergency Ordinance, barely a year after it was removed.
- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/najibs-administration-risks-flip-flop-label-in-cabinet-tiff-over-law-reform?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#sthash.1dNKsvsE.dpu
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