BN govt starts revoking ceramah permits

As the National Congress of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) is due to be launched this weekend in the state of Johore, and attempts initiated by the BN government to push for the enforcement of the so-called Peaceful Assembly Act in the parliament, the police force which is currently under the direct jurisdiction of Umno vice-president Hishammuddin Hussein (who is also the home minister) had started revoking a lots of ceramah permits issued earlier to a number of opposition parties.

Approved permits applied earlier by PKR, DAP and PAS to hold their series of ceramah nationwide has been revoked without any valid reason or whatsoever.

The home ministry should come forward to explain to our people what was their reason behind all these permit withdrawal after they were approved earlier? Citing national security as the reason cannot be accepted as there's no one who is threatening the national security of this country in the first place.

Revoking all these earlier approved permits would eventually provoke and advocate more dissent and protests among our people in the end of the day. And when these people revolt and protest on the withdrawal of their approved ceramah permits, we are certain that the police would just say, "there it is national security".

In actual fact it is the home ministry and the police who had provoke and anger the people because they purposely revoke these ceramah permits without any reason after having them approved earlier. The home ministry and the police had failed to take into account on how much costs has been committed by these ceramah organizers and promises made to the people to kick start these events.

Not only these opposition parties were disappointed but our people who has been promised with such events to get some in depth in to our country's real political were also gravely disappointed and disgusted with such action.

We also want to know that why did the authorities allow series after series of ceramahs with elements of violence and gangsterism organized by Umno to carry on while peaceful and ethical ceramahs organized by opposition parties are disallowed?

And yet the authorities also allowed a number of Umno "mat rempits" to disrupt previous ceramahs held by opposition parties and when the situation turns bad, they would blame the oppositions instead.

Where is justice then? Double standards and systematic revenge mounted by the authorities are rampantly and practically in use just because they wanted to please Umno and BN whose influence and support were seen decreasing.