If a police report is lodged against former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, accusing him of sedition, will he be investigated within 24 hours?

This question was posed by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang today to Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

The Gelang Patah MP also condemned the current sedition probe against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for remarks he uttered at a ceramah three years ago.

"If what Anwar said in March 2011 did not warrant any police investigation under the Sedition Act for more than  three years, what is the merit and justification now to investigate him for sedition for what he said then, apart from being a disgraceful case of persecution, political vendetta and gross abuse of power?" Lim asked.

"It may be argued that there is no statutory limitation for sedition, but this should apply indiscriminately to everyone, whether in government or otherwise.

"There is also also no statutory limitation for corruption offences, but no one in the pinnacles of power in Malaysia seems to need to worry about this," he added.

On Mahathir, Lim said the former prime minister too had made seditious remarks over his decision to contest in Gelang Patah, instead of Ipoh Timor, in the last election.

Among others, the DAP leader quoted Mahathir as saying that Lim wanted the Chinese in Gelang Patah and Johor to "reject working together and sharing with the Malays", "to dislike and hate the Malays" and to create "conflict and antagonism between the races".

Lim added: "All these three allegations by Mahathir were not only downright lies and falsehoods, but highly incendiary, inflammatory and seditious.

"I am not suggesting that Mahathir should be jailed for these sedition offences, but Zahid owes the Malaysian public a satisfactory explanation why Mahathir should be immune from police investigations ‘within 24 hours’ if a report is lodged."

Police report against Zahid

Lim was referring to Zahid swearing that police would commence investigations "within 24 hours" of a sedition complaint being lodged.

Yesterday, the DAP MP asked if the minister's oath applied to Umno ministers, leaders and Zahid himself.

"At 2.30pm yesterday, Perak DAP state secretary Wong Kah Woh lodged a police report against Zahid for making a seditious speech during the Pengkalan Kubor by-election campaign on Monday, for trying to incite racial animosities with a distorted account of the events in the Perak constitutional crisis in 2009.

"This morning, at 9.20am, a team from the Ipoh police took a statement from Wong on his sedition report against Zahid.

"Does this qualify to fulfil Zahid's oath of police commencing investigations 'within 24 hours' of any police report on sedition?" Lim asked.

He said he would not be surprised if Zahid had directed the Ipoh police to take a statement from Wong "within 24 hours" so that he could claim that he had kept to his oath.

"But this is just sheer humbuggery, for what Malaysians want are meaningful and not formal 'commencement' of police investigations, which means, at minimum, the  police taking a statement from the person who is the subject of the report, or, in the case of Wong’s sedition report, Zahid himself," he added.