SHAH ALAM, 22 Oct: The amendment of the confidentiality provision in Section 203A of the Penal Code would see that the people would no longer have the opportunity to gain access to abuse of power and leakages that happen in Barisan Nasional (BN) if approved.
The effect of proposed amendment on the provision would witness the country moving backward and giving ‘licence’ from corruption and abuse of power to continue to happen.
The Head of the Legal Bureau of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), Latheefa Koya, said that the Bill would make the Penal Code worse than the Official Secrets Act (OSA) 1972.
“Section 203A refers to officers, not only government officials but individuals who provide information or documents when on duty, can be imprisoned or fined up to RM1 million.
“Until now, we are still not sure what is meant by ‘any information’ or ‘any kind of information’. It is worse that the OSA which has a document classification process,” she said when contacted by TVSelangor today.
She said this when asked to comment of the comment by Member of Parliament for Padang Serai, N Surendran, during the House of Representatives debate session when he urged the government to drop the proposed amendment because the provision has never been done in the world of modern democracy, instead it is more suitable for a country or party like North Korea.
Latheefa said documents involving national security which may be deemed as confidential or restricted in the Section 203A case has no information.
“This move is among the worst made by BN and it is surely to cover up any information that can be accessed by the people to look at projects that are scandalous such as the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) project.