The Govt should not keep silent. For the rest of us it is Ok to express disgust or ridicule at what Perkasa’s chief says. But to go one step further and to call for his arrest on the charge of sedition? This has now spread to even members of the ruling establishment – eg Khairy Jamaluddin & lately, State Gerakan chief Dr Teng Hock Nan (see Malaysiakini). Is such a call necessary?

It should be highlighted that PR’s defacto chief (Anwar) is on record for saying that he does not support calls for sedition laws or the Internal Security Act to be used against Ibrahim Ali (in that instance it was about calling jihad against Christians, who were accused of trying to undermine Islam’s position in Malaysia). “As a matter of principle, I don’t support ISA or the Sedition Act and therefore I do not condone the use of these (laws), even as a temporary measure”.

The other point is the extremity of Ibrahim Ali’s remarks set a new and very high standard/threshold for sedition to be activated. If his remarks are not prosecutable now, then rightly very few people’s remarks after him ought, as a matter of legal precedence, be prosecutable for sedition.

Why our de facto law minister already told Malaysiakini that it would be unfair to take action against Ibrahim as he was only one of many people uttering seditious comments of late, and uttering this kind of ‘seditious’ statements has become a norm! If it’s really a norm that even the defacto law minister confirms, then sedition is or ought not to be anymore so easily legally prosecutable – as one does not procecute a norm amongst people- and thanks to Ibrahim Ali, he has achieved by way of unintended consequence what many other defenders of freedom of speech have failed to do – to render the Sedition Act irrelevant.

In fact the more he attacks Bersih the more he helps publicise it to general populace in which more would get provoked to join the march.

For past 30 years Malaysians are prohibited (at the pain of punishment for sedition) to utter seditious statements in the interest of racial harmony. But has racial harmony been promoted by self censorship in last 30 years? Now if uttering ‘seditious’ statements were a norm as what Nazri said – and we hold his word to it – it may signal a new order where people learn to be more tolerant of the other’s racist remarks that lead to them being insignificant and not a threat to collective peace or harmony. There are ultimately two approaches to this question: either clamp down anyone who makes racist / ‘seditious’ remarks (without favour & bias) or tolerate seditious remarks from anyone, and everyone learns to be less prickly or sensitive to what he says. If the first cannot be done, then let it be the second! After all the sedition law is inimical to the onward march of civilised thinking that stresses on tolerance. ‘Tolerence’ is not easy to cultivate and certainly difficult to prove if it were not tested against provocative and extreme remarks proscribed by sedition laws.

No no, more likely emergency (using Bersih as excuse) is a greater threat to Najib, being used as a ploy by the ambitious to usher and displace him from the seat of control and open up the succession path.