Detention without trial is heinous and unacceptable because it denies the prisoner recourse to self-defense. When it was introduced into this country, it was at a time when the communists were fighting a guerrilla-style warfare against British Malaya.

The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) had been declared illegal in 1948, three years after they were feted in victory parades as allies against Japanese fascism. To secure their commercial interests in one of their richest colonies, Britain set about dictating a transition of power largely on its own terms.

As Tunku Abdul Rahman himself admitted, it was the MCP that forced the hand of the British to grant Malaysia independence earlier than the original pre-conceived date.

In 1960, Hugh Hickling, then legal draftsman serving under the Tunku Administration, drew up the ISA. At the time, emergency had just been ended but the communist threat was still very real. Detention without trial was a preventive law, designed to prevent acts of terrorism and terrible violence. But even at that time, those arrested under the ISA had judicial recourse.

It was not used against political opponents who were participating in the public arena until the mid 1960s, at the time of Indonesian-sponsored "Konfrontasi". By this time, the ISA was too much an expedient tool to tar opponents with the communist brush and put off what they really represented – ideological challenges.

This was recognised and vehemently objected to by opposition parties, particularly Gerakan. No matter what one might think of Lim Keng Yaik, he was never a supporter of the ISA. He may have been politically outmaneuvered but he certainly put up a good challenge against the law.

Unfortunately, it was during his time in the Mahathir government that those arrested under the ISA were denied judicial review. This made the law untenable in terms of the UN Human Rights

Charter.

But never in our nation's history has the ISA been used with more obvious political motivation than in the case against Raja Petra Kamarudin. By putting Raja Petra away under ISA, denying him his day in court, the government has indirectly admitted that perhaps there is some truth in what Raja Petra says in his blog.

The claim that Raja Petra is a threat to national security because he insulted Islam does not hold water. This is simply because the said offending articles are still posted on the website. They have been read by thousands of Malaysians and there have been no riots. The government tacitly agrees because the cabinet instructed that the ban against the website be lifted.

As the ISA is a preventive law, one cannot use it in retrospect. The government must be able to prove that Raja Petra was about to post something even more damaging. Since Raja Petra has no right to deny this, he is caught in a Catch 22 situation. This he knew. As he said, "Heads they win, tails I lose". To the general public, this is a gross injustice.

Some 54 years ago, three years before we achieved independence and during the height of the communist insurrection, Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons , appeared in the air waves of the BBC. It was staged in 1960, the year the ISA became law in Malaya.

The play is about a man who gives up his life for his principles, whose will could not be bent by royal decree or imprisonment. He was not a revolutionary for he warned that doing away with all the laws of the land will only leave one without protection. But he would not bend to the will of a man who wanted to dispose of one woman in exchange for another.

Thomas More, the man for all seasons, was seen as obstinate, proud and totally disproportionate to his low birth by the establishment. The king's henchmen failed to bully him and only through the most obvious manipulation of the courts and the laws were they able to send him to the gallows.

They succeeded in killing him but also made him a martyr. Robert Bolt's play has been made into a movie and is highly recommended to those in government with a little conscience. It is a movie about integrity, dignity and legacy. It may offer new insights to those who think they know what integrity means.

The play is most relevant to Malaysia. For it is more than a story of how one man could not tolerate another man doing away with his woman. It is about an individual who once held high office brought down for standing by his principles. As Bolt's protagonist said just before they chopped off his head: "I die the king's good servant but God's first".

More importantly, when faced with the draconian preventive law, he informs: "The law requires more than assumption. It requires facts". The Malaysian government has succeeded in making Raja Petra, who will disagree with being compared to the saintly More, Malaysia's "man for all seasons".