In Malaysia the police are free to arrest and imprison anyone, using manufactured evidence and inventing false charges as veneer for the perfidy. Under the ISA there is no opportunity for rebuttal. This denial of due process is antithetical to all previous ideals of American jurisprudence, and if Rais is correct, it indicates that a total erosion of democratic norms has occurred in the Western legal system. The right to a defense has, until now, been considered sacrosanct, at least for US citizens. If Rais is right, it means the US has fallen as far from respect for basic human rights as Malaysia. The treatment of captured prisoners from Afghanistan, now held on Cuban turf, lends noxious support to this notion.

Rais Yatim states that he has received advanced legal training in a foreign school, and claims authorship of a doctoral thesis that details many abuses of the law that are occurring in Malaysia under an executive gone berserk. Yet, in the time since his appointment to the subject executive department, he seems to have made only one correct legal decision, and that is a recent one, where he agreed with the opinion of an opposition lawyer who pointed out that a traffic ticket based on remote video camera evidence requires, at the minimum, a notification to the offender before punitive action can be taken, either against the offending driver or the registered owner of the speeding vehicle. The fact that this complex legal analysis was made by an attorney in private practice, receiving only a second from the Law Minister, robs him of any claim to legal accumen. Alas, he must await new chance.

The statement that the US now finds the Malaysian ISA a desirable law, suitable for handling criminal matters fairly, must be scornfully held in abeyance until the US Attorney General Ashcroft has an oportunity to confirm the remarks attributed to him. Malaysians know the reports of their ministers are not reliable, especially when it comes to the ISA. It is preserved as the keystone of a corrupt and criminal conspiracy controlling the Malaysian government. Without the ISA and a compliant police wielding it as a cudgel, most that is wrong with Malaysia would quickly be put right.

The ISA not only removes leaders and active members of the political opposition from active participation in public affairs (and more especially the younger ones), it also tends to intimidate the general public. The political party in power uses the ISA as a truncheon, striving for maximal destructive effect without consideration for the deleterious draggling of the social fabric. As a legal matter, it is only applicable in a state of emergency, and such a state of emergency does not exist. How can it have legal potency? The sitting King and the Council of Rulers in Malaysia do not address this pertinent issue, and that they do not renders them effete and impotent in the public regard. It is time they took the matter in hand.

The Law Minister might profitably devote effort to research this issue in an honest and diligent effort, and therby acquire a fundamental legal expertise, rather than waste official hours pitching the legal patchwork that is the ISA to the prosecutors of the West. He would do better to sit at their knee and learn to prosecute government officers who manufacture evidence to support malicous cases. Malaysians are not impressed with his performance to date; the public perception of his legal knowledge now nudges a new nadir. His behaviour is not particularly original, prior ministers have sported a specious academic prowess. As Law Minister, surrounded on every side with police reports of corruption, he gives no hint he knows he is hip deep in dung.

The arrest and imprisonment of Yazid Sufaat (and now his wife), under the ISA, suggests there is greater Malaysian involvement in the destruction of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center than the Malaysian government will voluntarily reveal. If Malaysia is sincere in its stated desire to aid in the fight against terrorist acts, a prompt extradition of Yazid Sufaat and his wife to the US is the means to demonstrate it.