KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 21 — Putrajaya’s proposal to tweak the Penal Code to give the government wider powers to deal with gangsters has met with opposition from its own lawmakers who argued that the amendments could victimise innocent people.

Pengerang MP Datuk Azalina Othman Said was the first BN parliamentarian to object to the amendments in the Dewan Rakyat today after she described the Bill as vague and pointed out that some of the amendments could indiscriminately categorise minor offenders as serious criminals.

The former tourism minister cited as an example the incident involving an activist who raised the Sang Saka flag on the eve of this year’s Independence Day celebration. The changes to the Penal Code would mean the activist could be easily be jailed for five years.

“What if it is just a young boy who did not think of the consequences of his actions? He would be jailed together with rapists and murderers,” she said when debating the bill in the Dewan Rakyat.

“What is needed is mandatory counselling for these cases. If they repeat the offence five or 10 times, then it is understandable (to punish them). If someone burns the national flag, chances are that the person is naughty (or) insane, not that he’s a bad person,” she added.

Azalina then argued that the provisions in the amendments to punish those who aided members of organised crime were too wide and generic.

“If you want to table a law it has to precise and specific. If not we risk victimising innocent people. I ask the government to retract the bill and study it again,” she said.

Her BN colleague, Kinabatangan MP and vocal backer of the government, Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin, also echoed the view and said the amendments were akin to turning Malaysia into a “jail”.

“This is a bad law. It makes our country like a jail. If my friend asked to retract the bill, I also ask for it to be retracted before going for debate,” he said amid Azalina’s speech during the debate session.

Bung said the amendments were too vague that anyone could be easily categorised as a serious criminal under the changes, particularly on the provisions pertaining to vandalism.

“Even the people do not like it, people in villages put up posters, carry a knife, they do not know the law, but they will have to go to jail,” he said.

The amendments to the Penal Code are one of the 10 bills tabled by Putrajaya recently in a so-called attempt to combat organised crime.

It followed the controversial amendments to the Prevention of Crime Act (PCA) that were passed earlier this month, a law that has now restored Putrajaya’s preventive detention powers.

The opposition has also opposed the changes to the Penal Code.

Earlier today, PKR lawmaker N. Surendran called for Putrajaya to stop its plan to table the amendment, which will introduce the brand-new Section 203A to the Penal Code, saying it would only create a law even more restrictive than the Official Secrets Act (OSA) 1972.

The first-term parliamentarian pointed out that unlike the OSA, which views only certain information classified by the minister or his agents as secret, Section 203A sees everything as restricted information, a move that he said would target whistleblowers.