On July 26, 2004, I hurried to the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall to witness the "The Great Malaysian Debate" between Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang and Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz.

At the end of the entire programme, I felt cheated.

Lim and Nazri were each given 45 minutes to speak. Lim was the first to speak, with an extra five minutes given to him to answer points raised by Nazri. As such, there was actually no debate in the true sense of the word.

The unusual thing was that the organisers could not explain why the second part of the debate, which according to the programme, allocated 15 minutes to each speaker to wind up, was cancelled when the conditions imposed by the police only forbade questions from the floor.

Nor could it be considered as a ceramah (talk) because the topic "ISA - Yes or No?" had been fixed, and it had been promoted with the promise that was to be the historical "Great Malaysian Debate"!

What was more disappointing was that no television station aired it live and that the debate had to be carried out under the tight control of the police with 11 conditions imposed on the organiser.

Under the conditions, the speakers were not allowed to breach the Sedition Act, no questions were allowed from the floor, and all forms of weapons and explosives were not allowed into the hall!

As a democratic nation, didn't it occur to the Barisan Nasional government that it was being excessive in imposing such "senseless" conditions on the opposition leader and one of its own ministers? Or is Malaysia truly the police state some have claimed it is?

Rais' book

In his speech, Lim dwelled at length on the points raised in the book "Freedom under Executive Power in Malaysia" written by Dr Rais Yatim, who was Deputy Home Minister from 1976 - 78.

Amongst the reason he stated for the repeal of the ISA were:

- Since the Emergency of 1969, in reality no subversive elements exist be it within or outside the nation.

- There are adequate laws which can be used by the executive to handle every foreseeable eventuality, including a new emergency.

- The ISA was enacted during the war against communists; that objective no longer exists today.

- The continued application of the ISA has become an excuse for the government to use emergency-based measures to control the country.

- ISA is now not used for political reasons to neutralise opposition. [The detention of the Reformasi-7 in Black April, 2001 refutes this point - this writer].

- Malaysia should honour and abide by the provisions of basic human rights which are based on a range of international conventions.

Aside from that, Rais' claim of how the phrase "threat to the security of the nation" has been twisted by some, and how "the powers exercised by the police and the minister under the ISA have been in a unilateral manner, not subject to any other authority" were also used by Lim to criticise the ISA.

Also raised was the admission by Ghazali Shafie, who was home minister from August 1973 till July 1981, that for more than 4,000 arrests under the ISA [with 1,600 sent to detention camps], he had signed detention orders placed in front of him without further investigations to determine if the detentions were justified.

Nazri's rebuttal

Overall, Lim's performance was just mediocre, while Nazri's rebuttal showed a dearth of the spirit of democracy and disregard for the basic human rights of the rakyat.

For example, take Nazri's point that BN's victory in every general election is proof that the rakyat was saying "Yes" to the ISA.

If that point is valid, then extending the same logic, "Does this also mean that the rakyat are supportive of corrupt leaders when they vote BN?" as asked by the former PAS Youth chief, Mahfuz Omar.

If the BN government wants to know the true wishes of the rakyat, it should have permitted debates in all fields and at all levels of society without unfair restrictions. And all such debates should be aired live in toto by the various mass media.

Once the issue of the ISA has been debated and has become widely publicised, then a referendum should be carried out to determine whether the rakyat support or oppose the ISA.

I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Nazri saying that there will be no minister brave enough to detain those who posed threats to the nation's security if detention orders could be reviewed in court.

Was this not a crystal-clear declaration that many detention orders, if subjected to judicial review, would be ruled as invalid under the law?

In other words, many arrests and detentions under the ISA were actually abuses of power by the authorities carried out arbitrarily, or at least in a unilateral and subjective manner which was not in line with justice and democracy.

Differing lengths

Nazri deserved to be scoffed at when he tried compare the detention of common criminals with ISA detentions from the aspect of the length of detention without trial.

He said: "The difference between the two is only in terms of the length of detention [without trial] periods. For a police case, it is only 14 days, while for an ISA case, the detention can be for two years."

This clearly showed that Nazri did not value individual freedom as a basic human right, a right which cannot be usurped frivolously.

As a past Anwar Ibrahim supporter, if Nazri had followed in the footsteps of Mohd Ezam Mohd Nor, been involved in the reformasi movement, and be unfortunate enough to be detained under the ISA, then he would surely not have said what he said so brazenly - the only difference was between 14 days and two years!

Nazri could not repudiate Rais' points raised by Lim, instead he made a comment that Rais penned the book when he was in the opposition.

In an indirect manner, he had confessed that the existence of the ISA most assuredly does not benefit the opposition!

It also means that if the ruling coalition does not think much of basic human rights and the spirit of fairness and justice, and instead had a tendency to abuse the ISA in order to buttress a shaky governing coalition, then surely they are not prepared to abolish that draconian law!

This is exactly the behaviour of the BN government, which is reluctant to abolish the ISA.

The Bahasa Malaysia version of this article appeared on Wednesday.