If he was not a household name before September 2, 2014, he should have become that after he, on that day, became the first academician in Malaysian history to be charged under the Sedition Act of 1948.
Of course, Azmi Sharom, the daring, popular ponytailed law professor from Universiti Malaya, was not about to take in silence that affront by the authorities. He immediately got his lawyers to challenge the constitutionality of the Act itself. It was after all enacted before independence, and not by a Malaysian parliament. And anyway, who decides what sedition is?
On November 5 this year, however, the Federal Court ruled against him on that point, meaning that he will have to stand trial for remarks, now alleged to be seditious, which he made to a reporter.
