PETALING JAYA: Former de facto law minister Azalina Othman has hit out at two ministers over a police probe on Hannah Yeoh for a tweet on child marriage, saying the investigation would set a bad precedent.
“(It will) open unnecessary floodgates to question MPs and assemblymen for expressing their views on Twitter,” Azalina, the Barisan Nasional Pengerang MP, said on the micro-blogging site.
Azalina tagged Communications and Multimedia Minister Saifuddin Abdullah and Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin.
The tweet by Azalina, who has previously called for child marriages to be banned, follows that of former women, family and community development minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail coming to the defence of her ex-deputy Yeoh.
Azalina later told FMT that if authorities really wanted to probe anyone, they should go to more substantial platforms like Facebook or refer to speeches made.
“If it’s just a tweet, it is extremely flimsy,” she said.
Yesterday, Yeoh said she had been called in by Bukit Aman over a tweet expressing concern over the national roadmap to combat child marriage following the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government.
In her tweet on March 9, she had asked what would happen to the roadmap following the appointment of PAS MP Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff as her successor.
Police later confirmed that Yeoh was being probed for issuing statements that could cause public mischief and improper use of network facilities.
Earlier today, Wan Azizah pointed out that Zailah was an MP from Kelantan, which was among the seven states that did not agree to increasing the minimum age for marriage to 18.
“So was it wrong for Hannah Yeoh, who had helped draft the national roadmap (to combat child marriage) to ask the ministry’s current deputy Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff about its status?” the former deputy prime minister asked in a statement. - FMT
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