opinion

Mediocre but cunning schoolchildren usually go home with their poor examination results armed with the defence that either that some of their friends scored even lower, or that there is already an improvement compared to even poorer marks in the past.

Usually, responsible parents would reject these sort of excuses because they want their children to be more positive, self-critical and forward-looking in order to work harder and smarter to score better in the future.

To me, some top police officers, some members of the Malaysian ruling elite and their propagandists are exactly like those naughty, mediocre but cunning school children.

Their argument that the Internal Security Act (ISA) is used less frequently now and therefore, by implication, the government of Dr Mahathir is better than the governments of Tunku Abdul Rahman Tun Razak and Tun Hussein Onn.

In a byline in the New Straits Times on Sept 11, detailed figures and year-to-year breakdown on the number of ISA detainees from 1960 to 2001 were shown to 'prove' that we are now better off because fewer people are being incarcerated without trial under this colonial and imperialist law. The message is clear: be more grateful and accept this security law enacted in 1960.

If this kind of negative and mediocre mindset continues to prevail, one day, we will probably be offered a more factually 'indisputable' argument that Malaysia is definitely better than Cambodia under the reign of Pol Pot (pix) because political dissidents here have never been physically exterminated in 'killing fields'.

Judiciary neutralised

This kind of backward-looking and negative comparison with poorer performers, while factually correct and indisputable in itself, are just like those offered by schoolchildren who come home with poor marks to their parents.

The real question is actually not the lifeless numbers and quantitative facts but the human attitude and moral quality of the mind in interpreting the essence of these facts and figures in a larger and more dynamic context of the country and the world.

For example, Malaysians who are more knowledgeable in world and regional affairs could ask: Why can't we emulate the more positive and forward-looking examples of Taiwan and South Africa which had already abolished their similitudes of our Internal Security Act as early as the late 1980s and early 1990s respectively?

In fact, if we look back to pre-Mahathir days, ISA detainees were legally and constitutionally entitled to challenge the substance of the allegations made against them in their charge sheets, and apply for a habeas corpus in an open court of law.

However, in a 1988 amendment to the Internal Security Act, the role and power of the judiciary as a check on the abuses of emergency powers by the Home Minister and police was removed. That amendment was passed in the parliament when most of the opposition members, including the Parliamentary opposition leader and the Opposition Whip, were themselves detained under the ISA.

More draconian

Looking back at the modern history of Malaya and Malaysia, there were at least the real threats of the communist insurgency (1948-1960) as well as external aggression and invasion by Indonesian armed forces following Sukarno's declared diplomatic and military policy of 'crushing Malaysia' through the Confrontation (1963-1965).

Also, there were the perceived threats of revolutionary China and the Soviet Union conducting subversions against neighbouring countries, especially in Southeast Asia. And then, from 1975 to 1989, there was the threat of Soviet-Vietnam expansion in Southeast Asia through the Domino Effect, after the victories of communists in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, as well as the invasion and occupation of Cambodia by the Soviet-backed Vietnam.

Even then, ISA detainees were legally entitled to apply for a habeas corpus by challenging the substance of the allegation against them. And, of course, the mass media was freer.

Why tighten the national security law only after China, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia have become our friends in Asean and the Asean Regional Forum? Why is it that the ISA is made even more draconian when the Communist Party of Malaya, since 1989, has ceased its armed struggle?

Admittedly, there is a need for security laws and emergency powers in all countries, including the United States, Britain and Australia, but there are real issues and differences.

Vague threats

Firstly, the emergency powers in Malaysia is not time-and-purpose-specific. Emergency laws which are supposed to deal with specific, organised political violence for the duration of a threat are now also used generally against people who, for example, clone computer chips for handphones!

Surely, people who are allegedly engage in cloning handphone chips should be charged under the Penal Code or other criminal and non-security laws.

Secondly, modern emergency laws normally require that an emergency be openly and formally declared by the highest legislature, with clearly-defined threats of a massive scale cited. But in Malaysia, we are now told of all kinds of 'security threats' ranging from Islamic fundamentalism to the occult, pornography, moral decadence and others with the only common features of these 'threats' being their vagueness and changing names.

Thirdly, organisations that enforce national security like the police Special Branch do not seem to be subject to any parliamentary checks and monitoring. In the United States and Britain for example, security agencies like the CIA, FBI, MI5 and MI6 are subject to parliamentary control and scrutiny.

Their parliamentary or congressional committees on security and intelligence usually comprise legislators from both the government and the opposition. The point is that the definitions, conceptualisation and enforcement of genuine national security, especially internal security, have to be bipartisan.

No security agency, including the police Special Branch should be another state within the state. It is indeed time for Malaysians, and for that matter, Singaporeans, to review the old concepts and doctrines of national security and debate them openly with a modern, positive, socially responsible and forward-looking mind.

JAMES WONG WING ON, chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia , is a former Member of Parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.