The Universities and University Colleges Act was amended last year but debate goes on as to whether students should be allowed to join political parties.
THERE was quite a bit of buzz when four political science students from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) were recently charged under the Universities and University Colleges Act (AUKU) for their alleged involvement in the Hulu Selangor by-election. Another four can expect to face similar charges for participating in the Galas by-election.
In the case of two UKM students who were found to have taken part in the Umno assembly, the university has issued them a warning letter, asking them to explain themselves.
While the opposition has been calling for amendments to AUKU for decades, recently there has been a growing number of calls within Barisan Nasional itself, including from Umno and MCA Youth, asking for the act to be amended to allow university students the right to join politics.
Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin says youngsters view AUKU as something outdated which curtails their freedom.
But Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin is adamant that AUKU, in its present form, should remain.
“The purpose of going to university is to acquire knowledge. I am the Higher Education Minister. What assurances can I give parents and families if there is chaos in campus when students and lecturers get involved in politics and campaigns and the campus is turned into a political stage?
“We need to keep politics out of campus so that students will have peace of mind and can study,” he says.
Khaled adds that AUKU, following substantial amendments in 2009, already gives students a lot of freedom.
“They are free to talk about politics, take an interest in political happenings, invite politicians into the universities for academic purposes, go down to by-elections to observe what is happening on the ground. They just can’t join political parties.”
Interestingly, his own deputy in the ministry – Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah – has a totally different view.
Saifuddin believes that university students should be allowed to join political parties as well as campaign for the party or candidate of his or her choice.
“Not allowing them to become members of a political party contradicts the fact that they are allowed to vote. Voting means to support a political party or candidate and that’s allowed. These are contradictions which my conscience says is not right,” says Saifuddin, a Universiti Malaya (UM) student leader in the early 1980s.
He doubts that allowing students to join politics will lead to chaos in campus.
“At the end of the day, how many students are really political? It’s a small minority and I don’t think they are that irresponsible,” he argues.
And as an Umno supreme council member, Saifuddin finds it hard to reconcile to the fact that Malaysian students abroad are allowed to form Kelab Umno or Kelab PAS and be politically aligned while local university students are not. For him, this is undoubtedly double standards.
“Kelab Umno is a good example. Are the students causing trouble or playing truant because they are with Kelab Umno? No. They attend classes, get the grades and when they come back, they become professionals or start businesses etc.
“It is my belief that if we allow that same freedom to our students at local universities, they will know how to divide their time. During elections, they will bising bising (be vocal),then they will come back and study. They are not going to do harm to themselves (academically),” he stresses.
Well informed
Saifuddin points out that today’s youths are a lot more informed on issues because of the Internet. And for him, the way forward is to allow the idealists – “the voice of the conscience” – to speak up.
“University is not about buildings. It is about the intensity of debate that happens on campus between lecturers and lecturers, lecturers and students and among students themselves. It is about thesis, anti-thesis to get the synthesis.
“You have to allow those things to happen so that people learn to appreciate different views, agree to disagree and also to have a balance between what is idealistic and practical.
“The moment you stop certain debates, it becomes a problem. The theologians will come in – then you are in for a disaster,” says Saifuddin who feels so strongly about the need to amend AUKU that he submitted a paper on it to the Umno supreme council in August.
Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was in university at the height of the student movement in the country. That was in 1974, when students championing poverty-stricken farmers, protested in Tasek Utara and Baling. Other student leaders then included Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Datuk Ibrahim Ali and Hishammuddin Rais.
“We were anti-establishment, yes but we were non-partisan. We talked about issues and were social critics giving constructive comments and suggestions to the Government.”
“I went to PAS, PRM, Umno, MCA, MIC platforms to get an academic analysis about the political situation in Malaysia. We were very open and got exposed to all sides.
“That must be allowed. Students must be involved in getting and internalising the feeling as observers of political activities in the country. At that age, they have to be exposed to everything. There is no right or wrong. They have to get exposure, chew the information and decide what is best for them after they graduate,” he says.
As for the Hulu Selangor by-election, the case of the four UKM students charged under AUKU is still on-going. Khaled explains that when the students were stopped, they had a lot of party campaign flyers and pamphlets with them.
“If it is one or two, that wouldn’t be a problem. That would be for academic purposes. But with so many, that goes against AUKU,” he says.
On the students caught in the Galas by-election, he says they were distributing party flyers. As they were not registered as election party workers, they had no permission to distribute the flyers.
“This contravenes the Election Act and the Police Act,” he says.
For Saifuddin, all this is “most unfortunate”.
“I wish the law (AUKU) would be amended so that they wouldn’t be charged. Personally, I don’t agree with it but the law is there and I can’t be a deputy minister who is law breaking. These are the contradictions I have to live with,” he says.
Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek has been fighting for amendments to AUKU since his student days in the early 1980s. He finds the 2009 amendments quite substantial, describing it as “a major step towards liberalisation” and a “continuation of what they had fought for”.
He points out that students are free nowadays to get involved and even hold posts in the NGOs.
“NGOs like Aliran, Suaram, Sahabat Alam Malaysia are critical as they are all run by the academia. And they are not even government-friendly. But ask around how many students are involved in them. Hardly any!”
Changing culture
He notes that the culture among students has changed and that their pursuit of the paper chase is very strong and the issue of leadership is different from the past.
He says joining an NGO or youth organisation would require more or less the same skills as politics where one would need to think creatively on how to organise people, meetings, how to read minutes and so on.
“That is easier. If they won’t even take that up, how are they going to do something more complex (like politics)?” he asks.
“But that is not the point, says Batu MP Tian Chua.
The issue of rights, he says, is not a question of takers.
“It is about giving students their rights and it is up to them if they want to exercise it or not.”
Tian Chua points out there are problems NGOs face if they take in university students as this might restrict them further.
“Does this mean because students join the NGO, the NGO is not allowed to express its political stance or support a party in a by-election? ” he asks.
For him, the 2009 amendments just did not go far enough.
Disagreeing with Khaled that students can speak up on political issues, he says the university’s student affairs department (HEP) is all too powerful and wields the big stick.
“They get to decide if action should be taken, if a student can continue, whether he can be expelled. They can even set trials to execute certain punishments. They have an arbitrary way of administrating young people,” he cautions.
He stresses that students at local universities cannot form any organisation by themselves and need to register with the universities for these to be approved.
“In Australia, I can form a group for ‘Human Rights for Burundi’, register and get 20 students interested, start writing letters and tomorrow I can organise ‘Students against Rape’.
“Try it in Malaysian universities – you can’t! There is no flexibility. They allow things like Persatuan Pancing Ikan (Fishing Society) or Photography Society but you can’t react to the social needs.
“The university will say a quick response to the tsunami in Indonesia is okay but a quick response to a massacre in Maluku is not okay. So who decides which one is more urgent, which is political and which is not? So since the students are constrained, they don’t even bother to think about it.
“That is a very different type of young people they are cultivating,” he says.
While Shabery has nothing against allowing students to join politics, he points out that this is not a short-cut to academic excellence.
He cites as examples, Singapore and China where the students’ freedom is even more restricted than Malaysia but universities there (like NUS and Beijing University) are noted for their academic excellence.
Nevertheless, Shabery thinks universities should relax their grip on students.
“At university, there are some who are critical of the Government but when they go out, they change. When you control the students too much, they seem to be very supportive of the Government but when they graduate, they all become opposition. That is more dangerous.”