ISA masih diperlukan untuk menangkis ancaman bagi memastikan ancaman daripada puak antinasional dalam dan dari luar terkawal (ISA is still needed to ward off threats to ensure that threats from anti-nationalists within and without the country are controlled) - excerpt from Abdullah Ahmad's article in the April 22 edition of Mingguan Malaysia .

I cannot but be very impressed by your defence of the Internal Security Act (ISA) despite your five-year incarceration, thanks to the Act. It is beyond my comprehension how a man can endure five years of complete misery and come out still championing it. Only you and Dr Kassim Ahmad are the two people who openly defended this undemocratic act despite the bitter experience both of you had under ISA detention.

I know there are a lot of bootlickers in Umno who defend the ISA, but they are merely displaying hypocritical and spineless obeisance to the political master. I don't blame them, they are weak, corrupt, and have their big loans, houses, wives, mistresses to think about.

But you? A highly-educated former political adviser to the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, who has held many important government posts? And also Kassim Ahmad? An academic who used to head the People's Socialist Party? Although I hardly agree with most of your writings, I respect both of you since you're known to say and write things 'without fear or favour' . So I assume your ISA defence is a genuine expression.

How can this be? How can a widely travelled and better-than-average intellectual still defend a clearly undemocratic and morally wrong principle?

Forget about Malaysia being an advanced country in 2020. For once I totally agree with Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi when he said that Malaysia has a first-world infrastructure but a third-world mentality. If you, let alone the masses, can have a third-world thinking, hundreds of years will have to pass before Malaysia can be a truly advanced country.

Say whatever you like but the bottom line is, Acts like ISA are morally indefensible. End of the matter.

I must admit I'm one of the beneficiaries of Umno/government's policies. I was offered a Mara scholarship (later Colombo plan). I did my first degree overseas and later, thanks to the government again, my post-graduate degree overseas, too). I came back and served the government for 16 years before taking an optional early retirement and joined a multinational company's regional office in KL - purely because I was sick of the petty departmental shenanigans and lack of due recognition. (Ahh... to compare the professionalism of these two entities; talk about government departments' incompetence - but you know all that.)

Although I'm grateful to the government for the opportunity, unfortunately I only feel revulsion whenever Umno is mentioned.

Why is this so? To put it simply, Umno is like a robber and I'm his son. I feel grateful for what my father has done to me but I cannot but feel anger and hatred at what my father has done to others.

Rightly or wrongly I feel that Umno is chiefly controlled by shallow, hypocritical and corrupt leaders and supported by even shallower members who are hell-bent on getting a piece of the action.

I simply can not rationalise how people like Muhammad Muhammad Taib, the Umno vice-president, can still retain such a powerful post in the party. Do we seriously want Malaysia to be governed by people like him?

And people like Ibrahim Ali can win a division head post unopposed! And to judge by the pleas in the newspapers regarding money politics in Umno, one can only conclude that Umno is basically full of crooks.

Umno is too far gone. It's rotten to the core. Forget about saving a corpse because what Malaysia needs is a paradigm shift and the obvious way is to kick out Barisan Nasional and have a new lease of life in 2004. A new idealism and vision.

I know people like you who have much to lose will fight tooth and nail to retain BN rule till kingdom come but let's be honest: Umno fails in many aspects. It fails to uplift the Malays despite its very raison d'etre . It worsens the racial divide (which is not surprising as Umno itself is a racist party). The cronies - so it is claimed - plunder the wealth of the country. Public funds are abused almost wantonly and the lies it says about PAS, the only party which genuinely lives and breathes Islam, are unpardonable.

It is a pitiful joke that the wise men of Umno see it fit to think that reviving the so-called Amanat Hadi (Hadi's decree) issue is a political ace whereas it is a fact that about 20 years ago Hadi's challenge for a debate on the matter was cancelled because Umno had cold feet at the last moment.

And dear God, why do you people let that fellow Astora Jabat make a monkey of himself in Utusan Malaysia about Islam and PAS. I can assure you that his writings further strengthen the belief that Umno is bereft of respectable ulamas .

I can go on and on but I'm sure Tan Sri gets the gist of why I only feel revulsion when talking about Umno. And I'm by no means the only one out there.