Before Abolishing It, Ask Which Part

Saturday, 15 August 2026, Ayer Keroh, Melaka.

The policy speech at the PKR national congress reached the section on university students. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said students feel they should be free, but some are still dissatisfied, and have submitted a memorandum. Then he announced: we will abolish the Universities and University Colleges Act, which students call AUKU. ^1,2

The speech did not say what law universities would rest on once AUKU was gone.

The half they did not say#

The next day Anwar spoke again: he did not agree to any amendment or replacement law that restricts students' rights and freedoms. In the same report, the Higher Education Minister, Zambry Abdul Kadir, was already saying the ministry was looking for a "more comprehensive framework". ^3,4

Two weeks later Zambry put it more bluntly. AUKU has 44 sections in all, he said, and only 7 concern students. ^5,6 According to The Star, he also said AUKU is the parent law of the universities and without it there would be no universities, the only exception being Universiti Malaya, which has an older 1961 act.

The prime minister says "abolish"; the minister says "universities cannot function without it". Both statements are true, because they are not talking about the same thing.

What this article sets out to do is simple: lay out every change to this act over fifty-five years, by date, and look at what happened before each one. That lets readers judge for themselves what the 2026 move will actually abolish and what it will keep.

1971: The original provisions regulated organisations#

Go back to 1969. After the 13 May incident the country was under emergency rule, Parliament was suspended, and universities came under the Emergency (Essential Powers) Ordinance; according to scholar Wan Chang Da's 2019 account, this ordinance was the basis of the later AUKU.

In 1971, Education Minister Hussein Onn said at the second reading in Parliament that the government agreed with the concept of academic freedom, but it should be remembered that, like other freedoms, it is not absolute.

Section 15 as it then stood did not regulate the political stance of individual students. According to Wan, what it barred was student bodies such as student unions from affiliating with political parties or trade unions; individual students were simply not allowed to hold office in a party or trade union. The following day in Parliament, Hussein Onn also clarified that these provisions did not prevent students from holding and expressing political views as individuals.

In other words, on paper, the 1971 act left a door open: student organisations could not attach themselves to parties, but individual students could still have a position.

Wan also records that sections 15 and 16 were already strongly opposed by students and academics before they were passed.

December 1974: Baling and Kuala Lumpur#

That door narrowed after the end of 1974.

Wan's account is this: on 1 December 1974, a student-led demonstration took place in Baling, Kedah, with more than thirty thousand participants; on 3 December, about five thousand people took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur. For the first time, police entered the campuses of three universities, arresting 1,128 students and a small number of academics. These figures are Wan quoting other people's research, not police data that he verified himself.

The dates vary. Some reports put the demonstrations in November, and one search result says 7 December; this article uses Wan's 1 and 3 December without ruling further.

Baling arose from farmers going hungry after the collapse in rubber prices, a point covered in other chapters on this site. Here it is enough to hold on to one sequence: police entering the campuses and the mass arrests happened in December 1974; the act's next amendment came after.

1975: The door left only for others#

On 8 April 1975, Education Minister Mahathir tabled the amendment in the Dewan Rakyat. According to Wan, the debate lasted only about five hours, and the opposition's counter-motions were not carried.

This is a turning point for the whole act. Wan's verdict: the 1975 amendment was the single most important change in the state's tightening of control over universities.

How did the provisions change? Disciplinary powers under sections 15 and 16 were extended so that individual students could be expelled or suspended; the new sections 16A and 16C extended the disciplinary provisions to academic staff; student representatives were to be chosen by secret ballot; the power to appoint and remove the Vice-Chancellor passed from the University Board to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (on the minister's advice); deans were appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, replacing election by scholars; the University Board was also restructured, with the minister gaining the power to appoint its chairman.

Mahathir said in Parliament that nowhere else in the country did students take over the campus and drive out the administration as they did at the university. According to Wan, he linked the student movement with communism, and said its effect on bumiputera students was the most serious, a sabotage of the New Economic Policy.

That was the argument of the day, not this site's judgement. Wan raised a question he did not answer himself: was this punishment because the universities had "failed to control students", or a pretext for the government to take back control from autonomous universities?

One more point: Wan says that control over students narrowed to cover every individual student only from the 1975 amendment onward. The explanatory statement to the 2012 amendment bill likewise states plainly that the then-existing section 15, before amendment, did not allow students to join political parties.

One claim, one table of dates#

On 16 August 2026, speaking about abolishing AUKU, Anwar recalled where this law came from. As relayed by The Star, he said the original law restraining students was introduced around 1974, to restrain his freedom, because the active student leader at the time was him.

That is his recollection, and this article records it as it is. Whether it holds up, we can put the dates we can verify side by side.

Section 15 of 1971 already existed, regulating student organisations, more than three years before Baling. December 1974 was Baling and the mass arrests. The amendment that narrowed control to individual students came only in April 1975, after Baling.

In the parliamentary debate Wan read, the reason Mahathir gave was the whole student movement: communism, the New Economic Policy, campus order. Wan's article nowhere mentions Anwar's name, and does not link any amendment to any person.

This site has found no primary record supporting the claim that "the law was made for him", and none refuting it either. One thing can be established: Anwar was one of the key figures in the 1974 events, which multiple sources confirm. He himself, in an interview with Malay Mail in September 2025, also said he was jailed for two years over the Baling incident. The start and end dates of his detention are not found in primary sources in the public record.

31 October 2011: The court#

For the next thirty years the provisions were left untouched. What really shook them was a by-election in 2010.

That April, the Hulu Selangor parliamentary by-election was held in Selangor. Four students of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) went to the scene and were put through disciplinary proceedings by the university under section 15(5)(a), the provision that prohibited students from expressing support for or opposition to any political party. They did not accept this, and instead applied to the court for a declaration that the provision was unconstitutional. ^7,8

On 31 October 2011, three judges of the Court of Appeal ruled by a two-to-one majority that section 15(5)(a) infringed the freedom of speech guaranteed by Article 10(1)(a) of the Federal Constitution, was not a reasonable restriction permitted under Article 10(2)(a), and was therefore void under Article 4(1).

One judge in the majority wrote that students expressing support for or opposition to a political party would not endanger public order or public morality.

Another judge dissented. According to the judgment, he held that this was a matter of policy, for Parliament rather than the courts to decide, and that students had the ballot box as their remedy. Those words read a little bitterly today: the parties they would vote for were, in that era, precisely the ones undergraduates could not openly declare for.

In 2012 the act was amended: a new section 15 replaced the old provision in its entirety, and students could join any organisation, including political parties. The explanatory statement to the amendment bill states directly that removing the restriction on expressing a stance toward political parties is consistent with the Court of Appeal's decision in Hilman; Wan likewise treats this case as the foundation of the 2012 amendment. ^7,9

But the new provision did not release everything: political party activity within campus remained banned, which is what the new section 15(2)(d) means.

There is a detail here that is often misreported. On 22 November of the same year, the Federal Court dismissed the government's appeal, on the ground that the disputed provision had been repealed on 26 June that year and the case was moot (according to Malaysiakini). That is, the Federal Court never ruled on the constitutional question; the only decision with constitutional force is the Court of Appeal's two-to-one judgment.

2018 and 2024: Loosened one provision at a time#

In the 2018 general election, the Pakatan Harapan manifesto listed AUKU among the laws to be repealed. After taking office, the government did touch the act. ^10,11 Education Minister Maszlee Malik said the Cabinet had approved amending the act first and then abolishing it in stages, with a target of 2020 (according to FMT's 2018 report).

According to the New Straits Times, the Pakatan Harapan government at the time removed section 15(2)(c), the item that prohibited students from taking part in political party activity on campus. This is not the same provision as section 15(5)(a), which was decided in Hilman, and the two are often confused.

Why only amend and not abolish in 2018? Wan gives a structural reason: AUKU is the legal foundation on which most public universities were established, so to abolish it a replacement law must come first. ^7,5 According to Wan's footnote, 18 of the 20 public universities rest on it. Pakatan Harapan fell in early 2020 and the job was not finished. As for the political reasons the matter stalled then, no primary statement is found in the public record.

In March 2024, another amendment passed the Dewan Rakyat unanimously. ^11,12 According to The Star, student councils were given greater powers to manage their own activities and finances, and disciplinary power also moved from the Vice-Chancellor to a student disciplinary committee (according to the New Straits Times).

2026: Abolish the old, build the new#

Back to today. Sections 15 and 16, the provisions students care about most, have already had their edges worn down bit by bit by the courts and Parliament. What remains is a parent act that governs both students and how universities are established and governed.

Zambry says AUKU governs not only students but also the establishment of universities and other matters. ^6,13 According to Bernama, the new law covers universities' administrative structure, governance and academic matters. According to FMT, the ministry is "simplifying provisions"; the new law retains the part on establishing universities and relaxes restrictions on students through administrative measures.

And the timetable? According to Bernama's report of 23 September, Zambry said they would try to see whether a first reading could be held in the December Parliament sitting; the words used were "try" and "maybe".

On 8 October, there was a question on the parliamentary order paper, from Batu Gajah MP Sivakumar, asking the Higher Education Minister about the progress of drafting the new law and the commitment to table it in December. The order paper was reported by Bernama; how Zambry answered that day is not found in the public record.

Limits of the evidence#

As of writing, the following points rest on a single source or have not been closed off:

• The 1969 emergency ordinance, the content of the 1971 section 15, the parliamentary speeches of Hussein Onn and Mahathir, the Baling figures and the 1,128, the details of the 1975 amendment: all from one academic paper by Wan Chang Da, 2019, quoting Hansard. This site has not obtained the 1971 or 1975 Hansard, or the original text of the act.
• Anwar's recollection: from The Star's relay of 16 August 2026; the longer verbatim version appears only in search snippets and has not been checked word for word.
• Anwar jailed "two years" over Baling: only one Bernama report of September 2025, and there is also a "20 months" claim; no primary source for the start and end dates.
• Zambry's "without AUKU there would be no universities" and the 1961 Universiti Malaya act: found only in one The Star article of 30 August.
• The new law relaxing student restrictions through administrative measures: found only in one FMT article; the Cabinet-decided phrase "Higher Education Plan 2026-2035" is found only in Malaysiakini.
• The report of the Federal Court dismissing the appeal (22 November 2012), the details of the Cabinet approving the 2018 amendments and the removal of section 15(2)(c): all single-source (one each from Malaysiakini, FMT and the New Straits Times).
• The content of the 2012 amendment: based on the bill text and explanatory statement debated in Parliament, not the gazetted Act; provisions may have changed during debate, and the gazette date of effect was not obtained.
• The exact date Parliament passed the 2018 amendment: only a search snippet, the original page was not read, so this article does not give a specific day.
• Details of the students disciplined over the 2010 by-election, the full text of the judgment: only the law report's summary and the opening of the judgment were read.

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What the 15 August memorandum said, the reports this site has read do not say. Where the answer to the 8 October question is, the public record does not show.

If the December sitting really does hold a first reading, what we read for the first time will no longer be a speech but provisions: in which section the name of the university will remain.

Note: At the time of writing (October 2026), the new bill had not been tabled in Parliament; wherever the text says "not found in the public record", this site will keep watching and update.