KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 21 — A plan to raise funds to support the nascent anti-Sedition Act movement appears to be gaining steam on Facebook, as over a hundred people have so far donated to the cause just a day after the project was mooted.

Mooting the idea in a posting on Facebook yesterday, political scientist Wong Chin Huat figured that the public can actively be part of the movement to “defeat” the colonial-era law by sponsoring RM10 per person to help fund the work of activists, especially to cover the inevitable legal costs they will have to shoulder if charged.

The academic argued that if they are to consider the cause against the Act is for all, then it is only fair that all share in the cost through a clearly elucidated support system.

“The idea is gaining ground. People are getting excited because they see what they can do rather than waiting to see what can be done,” Wong told Malay Mail Online when contacted today.

The Monash University Malaysia lecturer explained that Putrajaya is playing a numbers game in its ongoing sedition blitz — which has so far nabbed 20 people who are mostly government critics — claiming that it needs to act on enough people to instil fear but not too many that the use of the Act becomes redundant.

Wong said there are only so many people the government can arrest before its legitimacy comes under question, and that limit becomes shorter the more the public gets actively involved in demanding accountability.

“At the moment they (government) are still doing it, because people don’t know how to respond. If more people start getting emboldened, the tipping point would be even shorter and it will stop this round of a witch hunt,” he said.

Wong, however, noted that the crowdsourcing idea needs to be formalised to ensure it is managed properly, which is why he hopes the Gerakan Hapuskan Akta Hasutan (GHAH) coalition will take it on.

“They said they will discuss it in a meeting tomorrow (Monday), so I think we can expect a more formal announcement on this in the next one or two days,” he said.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had pledged to do away with the controversial Act three times in the span of two years, and replace it with a National Harmony Act, with the most recent occasion on September 5.

But with growing pressure from conservatives within his own party, Umno, Najib said recently that the government may not repeal the Sedition Act after all, if its replacement was inferior.

Defenders of the Sedition Act, primarily pro-establishment conservatives including former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, contend that its removal will open the floodgates of attacks against the Bumiputera, Islam and the Malay rulers in the absence of another pre-independence law that has since been repealed — the Internal Security Act.