The Constitution of the independent Federation of Malaya — which later merged with Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak to form Malaysia — was drafted by the Reid Commission, a body of eminent jurists from the Commonwealth of Nations.
[5]The Working Committee established by the autonomous Federation's government adopted nearly all of Hamid's recommendations in his dissent, thereby eliminating the possibility of judicial review concerning the reasonableness of laws which infringed on the rights granted by Article 10.
[6]Lord William Reid, who chaired the Commission, said that: ...a greater part of the changes have been in the direction of giving more freedom to the executive and Parliament of Malaya and correspondingly less extensive guarantees of individual rights that we had recommended.
As a lawyer I do feel that the right of the subject is much better safeguarded if the last say is in the court of law rather than in the hands of the executive authority...[8]Over his objections, the Legislative Council approved the modified draft.
[10] Other laws curtailing the freedoms of Article 10 are the Police Act 1967, which criminalises the gathering of three or more people in a public place without a licence, and the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, which grants the Home Affairs Minister "absolute discretion" in the granting and revoking of publishing permits, and also makes it a criminal offense to possess a printing press without a licence.
Justice Raja Azlan Shah (later the Yang di-Pertuan Agong) once said: The right to free speech ceases at the point where it comes within the mischief of the Sedition Act.
[12]In 2009, the government announced it was considering amendment of several laws which impinge upon freedom of speech, including the controversial Internal Security Act (ISA), which has been used to detain numerous politicians and activists without trial.
[13] Legal scholars have suggested that compared to other fundamental liberties set out in Part II of the Constitution, the freedoms of speech, association and assembly are easily abridged by both the executive and legislative branches of the government.
[17] In criticising the Reid Commission's finding that the freedoms of Article 10 were "all firmly established in Malaya" prior to independence, it has been suggested that: ...these basic rights had not been clearly formulated or seen as being concrete and traditional.