Saturday, March 14, 2009

malaysiakini and INSULTING the ROYALTY

The actions taken against bloggers has been swift as according to this malaysiakini report Six in court for insulting sultan, one fined RM10,000 but I wonder if such punishments will do anything to improve the level of affection of the subjects for the royalty.
I do not believe the royalty has been consulted if they wanted such actions to be taken by the state on their behalf. In any constitutional monarchy and even the days of long ago, the state can never make laws to make citizens love their royals.
There are also many cases in history where rulers and leaders were not really of a healthy disposition and their subjects suffered under their rule.
Yet we are making use of the laws for the Internet to punish citizens on a vague charge under section 233 (1)(a) of the Multimedia Communication Act 1998.
I daresay that if this case was decided by a jury, the case would probably not be successful. With the judiciary under suspicion especially with the Lingam tapes, more Malaysians will also wonder if this is yet another case of a mistaken judgement.

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