OCTOBER 22 — For 55 years, the Universities and University Colleges Act or AUKU has silenced our campuses. Most of the time with its sheer presence. Like the most vicious gangster, the trick is to stoke fear in the masses, the student masses, and let time tick on.

The irony of its demise, or at least the announcement of it, remains. For AUKU was shaped by the 1974 Baling demonstrations and the detention of a fiery student leader called Anwar Ibrahim.

A year later, the then education minister Mahathir Mohamad tightened the legislation to gag three generations of student leaders.

Half a century later, that same student leader, now prime minister, tells the PKR National Congress in Ayer Keroh on August 15 that it must go. A day later he went further, promising that AUKU would be fully repealed without any new law that restricts or suppresses student movements.

So, he’s not being misunderstood, he wants AUKU chucked into the ash heap of history.

However, this is still Malaysia. Wait for the fine print before ordering a round of celebratory teh tarik.

The ruse before the misdirection

Within hours of the announcement, the Higher Education Ministry was talking about what comes next.

Minister Zambry Kadir said a more comprehensive legal framework to replace AUKU was already in the Malaysian Higher Education Plan 2026-2035, under a “One Higher Education Act” agenda.

His argument being AUKU covers more than student autonomy as it is the parent act for how universities are established and governed.

Fair enough. Universities need a legal spine. But by mid-September, Zambry was saying the new act was still being drafted, and that some student matters were being handled through executive measures and existing procedures.

Executive measures. Existing procedures. Any former student activist will recognise those words.

They are how the old order survives legislative threats. By delaying the law, then diluting it before stripping it of any efficacy.

Madani reforms AUKU 1.0

My scepticism comes from recent experience. In March 2024, Parliament passed amendments meant to give student bodies more autonomy over their activities and finances.

The amended Section 15A let student councils raise funds and accept contributions, subject to prevailing regulations and written laws.

The qualifiers killed the measure. Rights organisation Aliran warned back then, if the university board’s power to make regulations was left unchecked, they’d stymie the students and their financial independence. One step forward, two steps back.

True enough, the amendment has moved slowly or not at all. It has been met with delays, or with conditions no student union could reasonably meet, as if administrators were buying time until the next minister arrived.

A year after the amendment, the Universiti Malaya Students’ Union was fighting a new policy forcing every club to appoint an adviser from the student affairs department and get its approval before booking venues.

This April, UM told student groups to get prior approval for campus forums, after organisers were exasperated that their anti-corruption event was jettisoned.

The law is no match for policemen with weapons blocking off access, following university administrator instructions.

A year without freedom, just like the year before

Look at how 2026 has gone for young Malaysians who speak up.

In April, three activists were arrested after waving “Tangkap Azam Baki” placards while the ex-MACC chief Azam Baki spoke at the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur.

They were Mandiri coordinators Hamdin Nordin and Fakrurrazzi Khairur Rijal, and Liga Mahasiswa activist Ahsanul Akmal Sulam. Amnesty International Malaysia called it part of an alarming pattern of penalising non-violent expression.

In Johor, UTM student leaders were investigated by police in August for asking the university to review its campus curfew. They didn’t burn anything down. They asked for a review.

Then there is Ummi Umairah Bakhit. At a Higher Education Ministry-backed youth summit, the UM student questioned public donations to Najib Razak in front of a panel with Khairy Jamaluddin, Amirudin Shari and Onn Hafiz Ghazi, calling the crowdfunding “the stupidest thing I’ve seen in my entire life”.

Online, some threatened her with expulsion and harassed her. To its credit, UM’s vice-chancellor confirmed that no disciplinary action had been taken against her.

But that isn’t the point. The worrying part is not that the university punished her. It didn’t.

The worrying part is that the country spent a week debating whether it should. A student said something sharp about a convicted former prime minister, and the first public reflex was to ask what her university would do to her.

That reflex is what AUKU built, and repealing the Act is only the first step. It takes more to purge it from our system, our thinking process.

Prepare, it will be relentless

As I write, French students are blockading schools and marching in their hundreds of thousands.

More than 6,000 protesters have been arrested, most of them under 18. I can already hear the response in Putrajaya and in some newsrooms: see what freedom gets you.

I won’t water this down. Freer students will be more outspoken. They will criticise their vice-chancellors, the ministry, the government, the opposition, Bersama, and probably columnists like me.

Some of it will be rude, unfair, or wrong. That is what freedom looks like, and it is the reason to grant it.

The real problem is a strange national philosophy that says change can happen without upsetting anything or anyone.

On this view, reform should arrive sanitised, pre-approved and wrapped in a press statement. That belief has quietly defeated every AUKU reform so far, and it will defeat this one too unless we name it.

Litmus test

So here is the test for whatever replaces AUKU. Three things, none of them radical anywhere else in the democratic world.

First, students run their own elections. The administration has no role in vetting candidates, setting rules or counting votes.

Second, student unions own assets. Look at the Oxford Union, with its own building, rooms and hall, bought and run by students.

At a minimum, our unions need a bank account the university cannot freeze, control or close. Without money of its own, a union is just a eunuch.

Third, student activities need no university approval, as long as they break no law of the land.

None of these place students above the law. They are still bound by it. Anwar said so himself: existing criminal laws are enough to deal with any misconduct by student groups.

If they defame someone, the defamation laws apply. If they misuse union funds, they can be charged with criminal breach of trust. If they break the law at a protest, they can be arrested.

The only change is that they face these laws as ordinary citizens, not under a special statute designed to keep them quiet.

Here’s to being stronger

The present is not about calmer campuses; the present is about soulless campuses. Taking the doggedness of youth out of our youths in these facilities has largely neutered them.

It is horrifying to contemplate the students’ abilities to revolutionise Malaysia’s economy, society and politics when they leave these universities.

The repeal is 55 years too late. Much has been lost, time to take the manacles off.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.