Allow me to respond to Mohd Fauzi who wrote the letter 'Free speech and press is not the answer' (May 21). I think the writer's argument is too simplistic and (what's worse) he thinks others' are as simplistic as his.

To be able to criticise the government in malaysiakini is the alpha and omega of freedom of speech and the press?

No. Freedom of speech and the press has to be guaranteed by modern laws like Freedom of Information Act.

It also means the repeals or reviews of laws like the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), Internal Security Act (ISA), Sedition Act (SA) and Official Secrets Act (OSA), etc.

Modern rights have to be legally and constitutionally guaranteed just as a modern marriage is based on legally enforceable contracts, not on ad hoc verbal promises.

If the Sedition Act is against modern international law on human rights, then abolish it. Secular laws are not God-given or unchangeable. As Dr Mahathir Mohamad himself has shown in the many Constitutional amendments, laws can be changed, but the only questions are - change in what direction and for whose benefit?

And typical of a elitist bureaucrat, the writer also says that leaders do the right thing, not the popular one. This idea and tone sounds like a Machiavellian despot living in 16th century Italy, not Malaysia in the 21st.

True, leaders have to do unpopular but right things sometimes but can we therefore generalise that all popular things are not right? Can't there be cases or instances where things are both popular and right at the same time?

By dichotomising being right and being popular, the writer shows his contempt for the people whom he probably still regards as silly, uneducated and mindless. The reality is that more and more people are more educated, smarter and cleverer than the many bureaucrats or politicians, especially in the information era. Otherwise, how do we account for the continued momentum of the reformasi movement?