The recent wave of arrests stems from the ruling government's need to clip the wings of the Opposition following Umno's lost of support from the Malays, said KeADILan deputy president Dr Chandra Muzaffar.

Chandra said that the dominant party within the Barisan Nasional coalition was expected to react with "shock and dismay" because of an erosion of support from a community that had been its power base for over four decades.

"The targeting of Harakah and some other minor Malay journals and the four arrests under the Sedition Act should be read in that light," Chandra said in an article titled "Democracy in Malaysia", published today in regional business newspaper Asian Wall Street Journal.

Chandra's article was in response to the arrests of well-known lawyer cum politician Karpal Singh together with KeADILan vice president Marina Yusoff and Harakah editor Zulkifli Sulong and printer Chia Lim Thye.

All of them were charged under the Sedition Act while sacked deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's long-time aide and KeADILan youth chief Mohd Ezam Mohd Noor was charged under the Official Secrets Act.

According to Chandra, the British introduced the Sedition Act in 1948 to curb growing nationalist movements seeking to free the then Malaya from the colonialists. The Malayan Communist Party was one of the main targets of the law as was the Malay Nationalist Party.

The arrests sparked off rife speculations that more dissidents could be picked up by the police. Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said that more could be arrested pending police investigations.

Chandra described the arrests as a strategic move to undermine and weaken the opposition Barisan Alternatif, which had secured 44 per cent of the votes in the November polls. Umno is also said to have lost its credibility in the eyes of the Malays following its dismal showing at the elections.

While BN retained its two-thirds parliamentary majority, Umno obtained only 72 seats compared to the 94 it held in the last Parliament. In addition, the party lost Terengganu to PAS and failed to re-capture Kelantan. It was estimated that the party garnered only 45.3 per cent of the popular votes in 41 parliamentary constituencies where Malays made up at least 80 per cent of the electorate.

According to Chandra, Mahathir's actions against Opposition leaders and media seem to have backfired as a segment of the public perceived him as being "vindictive" and "authoritarian".

"A lot of people had hoped that after retaining his two-thirds majority in Parliament, Mahathir would be a little less antagonistic toward the Opposition and try to accommodate them within the political process."