It is much ado about nothing when activists and opposition groups decry the continued detention of the five reformasi activists under the Internal Security Act (ISA) despite the recent unanimous Federal Court decision ruling that the police had acted in bad faith detaining and interrogating them during the initial detention period but that technically the home minister's decision was separate, and therefore not impugned by police mala fide.

As far as I am concerned, the five may as well start planning their homecoming. The writing is on the wall. What we see before us is sandiwara (playacting). It does not require great legal scholarship to know that the minister acts in law on the advice of the police and if the police actions are deemed mala fide, the ministerial order based on police findings just cannot stand in law, on morals but most important from angle of political expediency.

The home minister representing the government simply will, in a matter of time, just have to release the five, and the reason why he has not done so yet is because he is presently overseas.

The cabinet has deferred discussion to wait for Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's return next week. This is the case so that the cabinet might give him face, not steal the "thunder" and "glory" from the proper minister to make the inevitable decision to release the five and to look good when he assumes the mantle of leadership next year.

So with the judiciary, when in making the artificial legal distinction between ministerial detention order and the actions of the police impugned, it left the former to the proper minister to make the call so that the proper accolades may be accorded to the proper person.

For detractors who criticise the judiciary as not being independent for quashing Anwar's appeal, their minds ought to be now in consecrated disorder as they just cannot now reconcile why the Federal Court has in a sudden turnabout, handed down a decision for the five opposition detainees and against the government.

Nor can they remain critical for long of the government of its ISA abuse if it actually releases the five in line with the tenor of the recent Federal Court decision, as I predict it will, simply because I suspect and this is the controversial part the government actually has wanted it to be so.

It is nave to think everything happens by chance, in isolation and not related to anything else in this political environment. Everything and everyone within this amorphous expression "the Establishment" always move more or less in unison in a general and certain direction according to a central directing will. Otherwise positions and benefits will be taken away and in more serious cases of non-conformity, more severe penalties will be imposed.

That directing will has already calculated, deliberated that it makes good political gambit to show a more liberal face, release the five refomasi detainees and to score political points and diffuse political unpopularity galvanised over the ISA and criticisms of judiciary's lack of independence.

At the moment, it costs the Barisan Nasional more political votes to keep these second echelon leaders of Keadilan in detention than to release them. It makes more Machiavellian sense to release them since the ruling clique has already recognised the necessity to re-invent its image and restore "goodwill" with its traditional Malay Muslim constituency in the face of PAS' increasing credible challenge.

Everything is geared to the coming general elections. The Barisan Nasional's victory must be thumping so that it can mark a big send off for the prime minister and a big welcome for the PM designate having recently made the popular decision as home minister to release five political detainees and put the draconian ISA in its place subject to judicial review.

People are nave if they ever think that the cabinet needs to further deliberate on a "postmortem" on the Federal Court decision and does not acquiesce with, if not actively support it in establishing the principle of judicial review of executive (police) actions behind ISA detentions.

No less a member of the establishment as Minister in the Prime Minister's Department and de facto Law Minister Dr Rais Yatim has given the cue as reported in news reports a few days ago when he said something to the effect that electorate has changed in sophistication and it was opportune for the government to reconsider relaxing on authoritarianism and reviewing some of the more restrictive laws like ISA.

Even Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has now said that the ruling was "proof of the judiciary's independence and spoke volumes in deflecting unjustified and lopsided views against Malaysian courts" (Gov't to conduct postmortem on ISA 5 decision). I am sure that Mahathir wants it to be perceived this way!

That the recent trend on the ruling part to liberalise and to listen to grouses on the ground for its own political relevance and survival is very clear, no matter how much the opposition would want to deny or contradict that. (It has to or else it is bereft of agenda).

However, whether the pace of reversal for more democratic and proper governance is fast enough to keep abreast with people's expectations, and indeed whether it can actually be done in a political culture that has all these years been nurtured upon corruption and abuse of power by politicians, bureaucrats and civil servants and other servants of the establishment, is altogether another question. That remains to be seen, though I am profoundly sceptical.