COMMENT Merdeka Day this year was going to be about pulling together. It was more sombre than most other celebrations, but we expected that so close after the first victims of MH17 started coming home.

Two telco companies hit the nail on the head when they focused on how Malaysians are already one big family with many of us referring to one another as brother, sister, aunty, uncle and even brother-in-law. This was going to be a Merdeka day of quiet contemplation, of pulling together to move the nation forward like in a Petronas advertisement.

Instead, all our attention focused upon how we were pulled apart. So many members of parliament have been charged with sedition that there would have to be at least 10 by-elections if they were all convicted. Some 150 individuals were arrested in Penang, snatched out of a Merdeka parade and sent directly to a police station.

An academic, a law lecturer, was charged with sedition on Tuesday for offering his legal opinion. In Sabah, another elected representative was charged with sedition for allegedly "insulting Islam". Yesterday, a journalist was also probe for sedition for reporting and quoting a politician who was among those arrested in Penang on Merdeka day.

At the risk of raising the ire of the authorities, one's mind boggles at this recent spate of police and legal action against dissenting views. Using the Sedition Act as a "catch all" is doubly ironic because the prime minister had promised to do away with the law...