While it is arguably true that bad people should be punished and kept away from good people, as opined by Mohd Jamil Abd Malik in his letter [#1] ISA is for bad people [/#] (April 14), simple humanity and compassion compel us as a society to establish a reasonable set of criteria for deciding what is 'bad' and what is 'good'. This set of criteria must be rooted in universally accepted values such as justice, fairness and integrity.

In addition, accused 'bad people' should be granted a fair avenue for presenting their defence and rebuttal, for the consequences of being labeled 'bad' can be severe.

Unfortunately, in Malaysia, as recent events have shown, this set of criteria has become arbitrary. Corruption, abuse of power, defrauding the taxpayers, are no longer considered characteristics of 'bad people'. On the other hand, striving for greater freedom and transparent governance, exercising your constitutional right to assembly and free speech and seeking an end to discrimination puts you squarely in the 'bad people' column, lands you in jail and submits you to embarrassment and physical abuse.

As it is, the notion of good and bad as we know is obsolete, replaced by a moral system where might is right. No piece of legislature illustrates this more explicitly than the Internal Security Act, which grants the mighty the power to imprison anyone for arbitrary reasons. As long as you play along with the mighty, you are 'good people'. If not, you are 'bad people' and eligible for jail terms not exceeding a few days, a few months or a few years, all at the sole discretion of the mighty, of course.

In this scenario, the 'good people' shouldn't really be too cavalier about the misfortunes of the 'bad people' because the simple act of having a political or moral conviction, or protesting against discrimination, or voicing an opinion, or just plain being in the wrong place at the wrong time can get you labelled as 'bad people'. We all know what happens to 'bad people' in Malaysia.

Then again, if all these stand for the writer's notion of normal life, then I stand corrected.