With all the attention focused on the contentious issue of hudud (Islamic penal code) laws, little is being said on how we come to this point. Look no further than to the Anwar Ibrahim trial and the culmination of series of assaults on the judiciary in the last two decades.

Those against the hudud laws should ask themselves how such a sham of a trial was allowed to perpetrate a secular constitution like ours. Without doubt, there would be those who are convinced that the trial was fair.

Those who do should trying answering these questions: why the inexplicable delays in legal processes, or the threat to witnesses who refused to corroborate? What of the recent amendment to the electoral laws, which does not give anyone the right to contest election results if not to perpetuate fraudulent victories that cannot be challenged in the court of law?

All these come on after a series of setbacks to the legal system: the sacking of the chief judge (through a tribunal led by the successor to that post), questionable legal appointments, countless constitutional amendments that weakened individual rights, ludicrous million-dollar lawsuits for criticism of business transactions with the intended purpose of silencing individuals and analysts from further exposé.

Not to mention the arbitrary Internal Security Act detentions that must have surely traumatised hundreds of families separated from fathers, brothers and sons. With all these so vividly etched in our recent history, it is difficult to be enthused by the many who have jumped on the anti-hudud bandwagon without elaborating what is that we stand to lose.

So many have opted out and into their gated enclaves, with scant interest in the happenings on the ground level that they fail to notice the writings on the wall. If the present system is perceived as being highly susceptible to tinkering and arbitrariness, than it is the right of individuals to seek for an alternative, no matter what mountains they may have to move.