The Kuala Lumpur Cyber Court has fixed Nov 22 to hear whether to allow the High Court to hear the constitutional issues raised in the sedition trial of PKR lawmaker N Surendran and two others.

This is in accordance with Section 30 of the Courts of Judicature Act.

Presiding judge Zaman Mohd Noor also allowed Surendran to amend his application.

The other two are human rights lawyer Eric Paulsen and cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, who is popularly known as Zunar.

The trio applied to have the High Court to revisit the Sedition Act, which was enacted pre-Merdeka, according to their defence counsel Latheefa Koya.

Surendran, Paulsen and Zunar want the court to hear the consitutionality of Section 3 (3) of Sedition Act, which stipulates that ‘intention’ is irrelevant.

They want the court to decide whether this section of the Act is in accordance with what is provided for in the Federal Constitution.

"The Sedition Act does not have the element of intention and we are saying the Act is unconstitutional as it makes the right of freedom of expression useless," Latheefa (photo) told the media outside the courtroom.

Senior lawyer M Puravalen also represented Surendran while Surendran acted on behalf of Paulsen and Zunar.

Surendran, who is the MP for Padang Serai, was charged for criticising a Court of Appeal ruling, through a news release titled “Fitnah II is flawed, defensive and insupportable”.

Paulsen was charged for a tweet criticising the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) for promoting extremism.

Zunar was slapped with nine charges related to sedition for tweets on PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy conviction.

All three were charged under Section 4(1)(c) of the Sedition Act.