Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 30/3/2017 When the Romanian government planned to enforce a decree to make power abuse a crime punishable by jail only when the sum involved exceeds 200,000 lei, which is equivalent to RM210,000, an estimated half a million Romanians took to the streets to protest their government’s plan to legitimise corruption below the said amount. The Romanian police did not try their best to prevent the demonstration from taking place in the city of Bucharest by arresting prominent leaders of opposition parties and civil rights organisations. This is part of the democratic process which the Romanian security has abided by. But in Malaysia, the Umno-dominated Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government has very often viewed protests and demonstrations as acts detrimental to parliamentary democracy, thus enacting many kinds of restrictions under the Peaceful Assembly Act, Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (Sosma), Prevention of...

The Registrar of Societies (ROS) or its name in Malay language, Pendaftar Pertubuhan is a department under the jurisdiction of the Home Affairs Ministry tasked to receive, review and approve the applications from various groups or parties to establish societies, associations and political parties in accordance to the Societies Act. Asides, the right of our people to assemble and our freedom to establish associations are also enshrined in the Federal Constitution. Since 1998, it has been noticed that groups or people who are trying to establish new political parties are usually being harassed or discouraged from doing so by the ROS without whatsoever reasonable explanations. Hassles such as, provision of documents, repeated requests for amendments of the party constitutions or by-laws, missing documentations, seeking unreasonable explanations and many more had in fact prevented and discouraged various groups from coming forward to have their groups, clubs or associations registered...