KUALA LUMPUR: Selamatkan Malaysia Movement secretariat committee member Badrul Hisham Shaharin said an alleged Sept 16 rally was a “chance meeting”, and not an intentional assembly.
“As someone on the secretariat committee, I declare that no gathering or parade took place on Sept 16.
“What happened was that we were praying at a mosque in Kampung Baru. Later, Tun Faisal Ismail Aziz (a committee member) went to the Dang Wangi police station to lodge a report, and the crowd wanted to follow us.
“What could we have done?” said Badrul, or Chegubard, after giving his statement on the rally at the station today.
He claimed the “speeches” made on that day were simply “celebrations among the crowd and supporters” and “interviews with media personnel”.
“Tun Faisal promised to speak to the media after he lodged the report. There were too many people, so we had to use a PA system to address the crowd. For me, nothing wrong was committed here,” he said.
Badrul also said that he has lodged a report against the attorney-general’s chambers and the police as he claimed the investigation against the rally’s participants was unlawful.
He claimed section 9(5) of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 (PAA) was declared by the Court of Appeal to be unlawful in the case of Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad v Public Prosecutor (2014), as it went against the right to assemble peacefully.
However, a check by FMT revealed that another Court of Appeal decision in 2015 ruled that the particular provision is “valid and enforceable” and within the parameters of the constitution. In that case, R Yuneswaran was charged and convicted under the same provision for organising the “Blackout 505” rally in 2013, which was deemed to be unlawful.
According to a report by The Malaysian Insider, a three-member bench chaired by Justice Raus Sharif said Section 9(5) of the PAA did not run afoul of Article 10 of the Federal Constitution.
As such, Raus said, the Court of Appeal had to depart from its ruling in Nik Nazmi’s case which had declared section 9(5) was unconstitutional.
The Court of Appeal’s 2015 ruling remains the latest decision to date on the issue to date.