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On Friday he — and the rest of Malaysia — discovered that this boy had the power to force police to make an elected chief minister spend an hour explaining to the cops why a remark made on limguaneng.com was not seditious.
Lim Guan Eng described the report and the police investigation of him as “frivolous”.
“It is up to the police whether to pursue it, but to whose benefit was this done?” Lim told reporters after being questioned by the cops on Friday.
How the boy triggered the probe was by becoming one of five people in Johor, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur who filed a police report against Guan Eng for something the chief minister blogged on the recent shariah law controversy.
Another of the complainants was the teen’s 20-year-old sister, Aeshah Adlina.
The boy, who revealed his details to Berita Harian, told the daily: “My father said he wanted to lodge a police report, and I asked if I too could lodge a report. My father allowed it.”
A senior federal police officer that FMT spoke to, who wanted not to be named, said there was nothing wrong for a minor to lodge a police report.
The officer said there were no provisions in the Criminal Procedure Code that blocked a teenager from filing a report.
“Then, the next step is to determine if the complaint has weight and veracity. If there is, we will proceed to investigate,” the officer told FMT.
A senior criminal lawyer expanded on that point, saying that although a minor can file a police report, the courts do first have to be satisfied of the minor’s competency before he can testify in court. That’s what it says in the Evidence Act 1950.
The lawyer said the competency of the witness has to be decided by the court.
The boy’s specific complaint to the police on Nov 23, when he was still 13 years old, was about Guan Eng’s post against the amendment of the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Act 355). The teen claimed it was against the Federal Constitution.
“I lodged the report after finding Lim’s blog post to be inaccurate, and also contradicted law,” the boy told Berita Harian.
In his own blog, the teen said Lim’s blog post was a “recycled accusation”, which was countered by many before.
“Neither the Act 355 nor the amendment of the Act is contrary to the Federal Constitution of Malaysia and the amendment of Act 355, it is not about implementing hudud-like laws as falsely accused by the CM of Pulau Pinang,” the boy wrote on his blog.
He also wrote: “The fact that the Federal Constitution recognises the institution of Shariah Courts as stated in the Article 121 (1A) and the Part 1 List II of the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution, proves that the Act 355 is not contrary to the Federal Constitution.
The boy told Berita Harian that he wants to become a politician, deliver speeches at PWTC, Parliament and the United Nations.
He has published his police report on his own blog.
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