Malaysian government leaders are obviously exploiting the fears created by the recent bombings in Bali to justify Malaysia's much-dreaded Internal Security Act (ISA), thereby hoping to pull the wool over people's eyes over the many gross abuses of this draconian act under Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's leadership.

Both Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar and Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail have on separate occasions stressed on the importance of having preventive laws like the ISA to avoid bloodshed such as that seen in Bali.

Let us put the record straight at the outset.

What abhors and angers Malaysians is not so much the existence of a preventive law per se as the gross abuses of such law to protect a corrupt leadership from being challenged by legitimate opponents.

When ISA was introduced in 1960, the government leadership gave a solemn pledge in Parliament that this powerful law was specifically enacted to combat armed communist insurgency and would be used exclusively for this purpose. It further expressly pledged that this law would never be used against lawful political opposition and dissenters.

This solemn pledge was broken time and again by Mahathir. Worse than that, the latter has repeatedly amended the law to make it even more draconian.

The latest example of such abuse was the mass arrest of opposition leaders in April 2001 on the ground of plotting an armed rebellion. These arrests were subsequently condemned by the Federal Court (highest court) in a habeas corpus appeal as male fide detention, after establishing that the real purpose of detention was to thwart an opposition movement and not an armed rebellion.

Regrettably, this judgment was a farce, as the judges did not have the courage to order for the release of the detainees in spite of these findings, showing once again that the present judiciary continues to function under the thumb of the executive.

And so, in spite of their proven innocence, these political leaders will continue to languish in jail indefinitely, providing living proof of the ruling Barisan Nasional's abuse of ISA to crush legitimate political opposition.

Interestingly, Abdul Gani, in his new-found enthusiam to promote ISA following the Bali bombing, boasted that: "in the aftermath of 911, countries like USA which criticised our preventive laws have to eat humble pie by studying and adopting our preventive laws".

This claim is far-fetched and misleading, as the US Patriot Act can only be applied to foreigners suspected of armed sabotage, while our ISA gives unlimited power to the ruling party to jail our own innocent citizens indefinitely for no breach of law other than exercising their constitutional rights to criticise and oppose the ruling party.

Besides, the US act allows only limited period of detention without trial, beyond which the suspect must be charged and tried, unlike the Malaysian law which allows indefinite detention without trial. Other Malaysian cruelty not found in the US law is the deprivation of legal counsel during the interrogatory detention.

Equally mischievous is Syed Hamid's attempt to convince Malaysians that civil liberties and security are mutually exclusive, as he said: "if we were to abide by human rights and civil liberties, many people could have died", referring to the Bali bombing.

This false doctrine must be rejected. Emergency power and democracy can co-exist, provided that we have a responsible government that fully respects and adheres to the separation of power among the three independent institutions in a democracy (parliament, judiciary and executive), and provided that such emergency power is carefully limited in scope, with built-in safeguards to avoid abuses.

In fact, Malaysians have shown that they are mature enough to willingly accept a preventive law if the situation so demands, as in the case of communist insurgency in 1960 when the original ISA was enacted. However, what we cannot accept are treacherous leaders who betray the people's trust by progressively making the law more draconian with evil intentions and subsequently abusing it to enslave the people, even when the emergency situation for which this law was originally created has long disappeared. And this is what the present leadership has done.

If the BN leadership's intention has been honourable, that is, using ISA to deal with only true saboteurs of this country, does the Home Ministry need to hide behind such absolute power as the authority to detain a person permanently without trial and beyond judicial review? Do our police need to be so insulated from challenge that legal counsel be denied to the suspect during the interrogation stage?

Surely, enemies of state who threaten our national security must have with them evidence that could at least stand up to rudimentary scrutiny?

Why then the necessity to grant total exemption from public accountability as practised by the Mahathir government under the present ISA to wantonly put lawful dissenters behind bars?

Granted that the recent rise in terrorism in this region may eventually necessitate an emergency law to protect national security, there is still absolutely no justification to allow the ISA to continue in its present form of unlimited power without any safeguard against abuses.

More so when we have a leadership that has manipulated all our democratic institutions, including judiciary and police to function as instruments of oppression against the opposition, in clear violation of our Constitution.

At this extraordinary time of fear and anxiety when the Western powers are preoccupied with their global anti-terrorism campaign and close their eyes on human right violations, Malaysians need to be more steadfast than ever to protect and enhance whatever human rights left to them against predatory advances of an insatiable autocratic power.