No, the Court of Appeal ruling on the unconstitutionality of a section of the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (UUCA) is not "merely an opinion of the court", says Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin.

In taking this stand, Khairy opposed the position taken by Minister in Prime Minister's Department Nazri Abdul Aziz yesterday that Section 15(5) of the UUCA is still a valid law despite the judgment made on Monday.

NONE In fact, the judgment of the court is legally binding, and it's not an "opinion", Khairy said today.

"No, it's binding. Court decisions and the constitutionality of the law are (legally) binding," he told the press after meeting with three out of the four former Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia students who won their case on the matter against the government.

Nazri, who is the de facto law minister, had insisted that the Appeal Court ruling was merely the "opinion of the court", that it was "just obiter dictum (an opinion in passing) of the court".

Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah and Deputy Youth and Sports Minister Gan Ping Sieu were also present.

Saifuddin said he had met with several cabinet ministers to ask them not to take the case to the Federal Court.

NONE He said if the government decided to appeal, then it will lose morally, even if it was successful in winning the appeal in the Federal Court.

"If you appeal, even though you win (legally), you are considered to have lost from the moral perspective. If you lose legally, you lose morally (as well), which is twice.

"That's a very big loss and we're going to the general election. We cannot afford to lose so many battles before going to the general election," Saifuddin added.

Saifuddin said that since the section of the act is obsolete, the students are free to join the election campaign in the next general election if the cabinet decides not to appeal.

'No need to abolish UUCA'

However, the three of them do not agree that the Act be abolished, only that it be amended.

Saifuddin said abolishing the UUCA would be a long-term matter and the government should only focus on amending it for the time being.

Gan said many provisions of the UUCA were related to the administration of public institutions of higher education and if the government decided to abolish it in place of a new one, the content of the new law would be more or less the same.

Therefore, Gan said, it would be better for the government to focus on how to amend the current Act to provide more freedom for the students.

Khairy said the government should abolish Section 15 of the UUCA completely, but not the entire Act, in order to let students participate in politics freely.

He is confident that students would know how to differentiate between healthy and bad ideologies, and that they would enjoy the freedom with full responsibility.

Muhammad Hilman Idham, one of the former UKM students who won their case against the government, said changes to the law depended on the political will of the government - and whether it wanted to amend the law or not.

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