Kuala Lampur, Oct. 23 -- For 55 years, the Universities and University Colleges Act or AUKU has silenced our campuses. Most of the time with its sheer presence. Like the most vicious gangster, the trick is to stoke fear in the masses, the student masses, and let time tick on.

The irony of its demise, or at least the announcement of it, remains. For AUKU was shaped by the 1974 Baling demonstrations and the detention of a fiery student leader called Anwar Ibrahim.

A year later, the then education minister Mahathir Mohamad tightened the legislation to gag three generations of student leaders.

Half a century later, that same student leader, now prime minister, tells the PKR National Congress in Ayer Keroh on August 15 that it must go. A da...