If Keadilan Youth chief Mohd Ezam Mohd Nor was right that OSA was a " shelter for the corrupt ", the initials should not stand for 'Official Secrets Act' and should, by legislative amendment, be changed to 'Officials' Secrets Act'.
In targeting unauthorised disclosure of "classified" information, the criterion of what should be classified as secret is crucial.
It should be the test of whether national security and public interest are compromised if such information were divulged, as assessed objectively.
It should not be measured by whether the information is personally embarrassing or politically incorrect for 'protected' officials.
If it were such, then the OSA is a very bad piece of legislation and its infraction, in exposing corruption, would indeed be a call to higher duty to national and public interest.
Not too long ago, I think there was a call by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Dr Rais Yatim, that the Anti-Corruption Agency disclosed publicly its progress of investigations relating to high-profile cases emanating from police reports lodged against corporate manipulators as well as public officials.
It seems terribly inconsistent that a minister like Rais, could deem it fit to call on ACA to disclose in public its investigations of high-profile cases, and yet someone else in the opposition, like Ezam could be charged under OSA for exposing the ACA's investigations into allegations against a minister and a chief minister.
Somehow the prosecution of Ezam is not consistent with the national drift in favour of calling for more transparency in police/ACA investigations.
Even if the people of this country have high threshold of tolerance and are anaesthetised to the many shenanigans of officialdom, they can still distinguish between elemental concepts of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and whether a law is an ass.
Even if they have no sympathy for Ezam's brand of politics, they can still feel outraged at the incongruity of his prosecution under a piece of legislation that has been implemented in a manner that suggests covering up of high-level misdeeds.
