KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — The police will allow the opposition-planned rally in the city to proceed if it is conducted within the provisions of the Peaceful Assembly Act (PPA), Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said today.
Yesterday, Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said Pakatan Rakyat (PR) would hold a mammoth-sized rally on June 15 to protest alleged electoral fraud in Election 2013.
“If Anwar is planning to hold a rally within the premise of the APA (Malay acronym for the PPA), the police will allow it,” Ahmad Zahid told reporters after visiting a government drug rehabilitation centre in Sungai Besi here.
The PKR de facto leader had previously said the opposition would try and engage the Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar in a bid to get the authorities to allow the peaceful rally to proceed on June 15.
The party’s strategic director Rafizi Ramli said this evening that party representatives would issue a notice to the police tomorrow in accordance with the PPA.
“We will issue the notice tomorrow which is well before the 10-day period needed to do so in accordance with the PPA.
“We will also reveal the details of the rally in a press conference tomorrow,” he told a press conference held in the party’s headquarters in Petaling Jaya just now.
Earlier today, Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said she supported Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) right to organise a “Black 505” mass rally in Kuala Lumpur on June 15 amid a government crackdown on opposition figures and activists.
The chief of the Bersih 2.0 polls watchdog noted that one of the aims of the rally was to call for the resignation of top Election Commission (EC) officials due to widespread reports of electoral fraud in the May 5 general election.
Ambiga said she agreed with PR’s demands for EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Yusof and his deputy Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar to step down to effect real change.
The electoral reform activist said last Saturday that it was meaningless to put the EC under the control of a bipartisan parliamentary select committee (PSC) if the election regulator was not injected with new blood.
Tens of thousands have flooded PR’s “Black 505” rallies against vote-rigging across the country after Election 2013 that saw Barisan Nasional (BN) retain power with a slimmer majority of just 133 federal seats to PR’s 89.
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