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Education Minister Maszlee Malik has announced sweeping reforms to give public university students and those from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) more political freedom.

Among the reforms are plans to abolish legal provisions that bar students from being politically active, as well as empowering students to carry out campus elections themselves without intervention from university administrations.

"In the upcoming Parliament seating, I will bring the (plans on the) abolishments towards certain provisions which bar students from being active in politics," he said.

Earlier, Maszlee held a press conference after a meeting with a group of student activists led by Asheeq Ali Sethi Alivi to discuss on the abolition of the University and University Colleges Act (UUCA) at the Everly Hotel, Putrajaya.

The minister said that IIUM has agreed to form a students union where they can manage their own activities and have a  representative in the senate.

Meanwhile, Asheeq announced that Maszlee had also agreed for all politically motivated actions against students under the UUCA be dropped. 

"The past government initiated the politically motivated actions under UUCA and those actions will be dropped.

"We are happy and fully accept the decision by the ministry to drop the actions against the students who had voiced out their opinions during the BN era," he said in a separate press conference.

Asheeq said the ministry had also given a nod for the students to form a campus election monitoring committee and urged the universities to cooperate with the committee.

"This is the era of new Malaysia where students must be allowed to speak and to contest without intimidation or threat from any parties.

"Dirty actions such as intimidation which happened under the BN era has ended," he said.

Asheeq, who had protested against Maszlee's appointment as the IIUM president recently, now commended him for conducting a meeting with students.

"We will give our recommendation to the ministry in terms of reformation and the ministry is open to accept it. It's something good and we have to commend the ministry for accepting the students' voice and for conducting the meeting today.

"We are committed to empowering students to speak up, to bring change and be a part of new Malaysia," he added.

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