Malaysian Parliament Passes National Security Council Bill

Malaysia’s parliament Thursday passed a bill vesting a national security council (NSC) with special powers, but opponents are criticizing the new law because it gives the prime minister too much power, they say.

After the debating the bill for six and a half hours on Thursday, the Dewan Rakyat, as parliament is known, voted 107-74 in favor of the National Security Council Bill (2015) without any amendments.

“This is worse than the ISA,” Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, a leader with the opposition People’s Justice Party (PKR), told reporters in the lobby of parliament, referring to Malaysia’s now abolished Internal Security Act and suggesting that the NSC would now be accountable to no one.

“This is a law that should not be included in the parliament,” she said.

The new law comes as the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak is embroiled in a corruption scandal around a deeply indebted state fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, and authorities have been cracking down on his critics and dissenters by charging them under the nation’s sedition law.

The NSC law vests the council with sweeping powers, according to reports. These 15 new powers include the ability to impose curfews, arrest people and conduct searches without warrants in a “security area” declared by the council in the name of protecting the country’s interests, local media reported.

The council consists of the prime minister, who chairs it, the deputy prime minister, the ministers of defense, home affairs and communications and multimedia, as well as three other top officials.

The National Security Council was instituted in 1971, in the aftermath of race riots that shook Malaysia in 1969, but the council had limited powers and had to consult the Yang di-Pertuan Agong – the king – on national security questions during emergencies. The new law allows the prime minister to bypass the king in declaring a curfew, among other actions, critics say.

“Now we know what the path to Malaysian dictatorship looks like,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch,  said in a statement issued Thursday, before parliament adopted the bill.

“[T]he Malaysian government’s proposed National Security Council bill is quite clearly a tool for repression. While touted as a law to protect national security, the law provides expansive powers that could fundamentally threaten human rights and democratic rule,” Robertson said.

“The law is far broader than can be justified by any real threat to Malaysia’s national security, and creates a real risk of abuse in the hands of Prime Minister Najib and his embattled government,” he added.

The bill’s critics included Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister who ruled Malaysia from 1981 to 2003.

“It is as if we will have a dictatorship,” Malaysiakini quoted the 90-year-old ex-PM, one of Najib’s fiercest critics who was known for his authoritarian style of rule, as warning.

The government has justified the bill, saying the new law was needed to safeguard the nation from threats such as cyber-attacks, maritime terrorism and transnational crime, the state-run news agency Bernama, reported.

Rushed through?

Parliament adopted the bill on the last day of its current session, but opposition lawmakers complained that the government hurried it through by introducing it for debate only on Tuesday.

Gobind Singh, an MP with the Democratic Action Party (DAP) from Puchong, said the government had acted irresponsibly.

“Obviously, everyone should be given enough time to examine the bill before it is approved into law. It is irresponsible and unfair for the government to throw this proposal to us and beg to be debated on the last day of parliament,” Singh said.

“This proposal should be carefully reviewed and must be explained clearly, and we must make sure it has no abuse of power,” he told reporters on Thursday.

The bill was introduced by Shahidan Kassim, the minister at the Prime Minister’s Department.

Winding up one of the rounds of debate on the bill, Shahidan said the law was not intended to declare an area as an “emergency area” but only as “a safety area.”

“This bill is not in conflict with the Constitution. We referred it to the attorney general, and he told us it did not conflict with the Constitution,” Shahidan said.