The Federal Constitution guarantees the rights and obligations of a state's citizens. In Malaysia, this is in the form of lip service, in which the intentions of its framers are not allowed to be tested in court.

That is reserved for Parliament, which in Malaysia it does not. The constitutional issues that once were discussed in courts were whittled down. The judges were content to let matters be. They did not, until recently, believe it was their role to discuss the importance of constitutional guarantees.

That changed early this month when Justice Hishamuddin Mohamed Yunus, of the Shah Alam High Court, ordered that two detainees under the Internal Security Act (ISA) be produced in a habeas corpus petition their families had brought.

It was such a radical departure from practice that the Federal Court, to which a reference was made, slapped it down in double quick time. But it is a welcome sign that the courts take an active role in widening the scope of a citizen's rights beyond the law and include the Constitution as an integral part of that.

It is more than that. Public debate is severely restricted in Malaysia. Political issues cannot be articulated in public without the threat of arrest and jail. Political rallies are banned and is subject to so many restrictions and delays that it leaves the organisers on tenterhooks until the last moment.

The newspapers would not, until the arrival of the Internet, discuss issues of the day. All in the interest of nation-building, and an untested belief that free speech would destroy the country.

Bottling of dissent

But when dissent and contrary views are bottled up, they must eventually explode. As it now has. The government finds its writ challenged, the alternative press is more believed than the mainstream ones, its Malay support drifts away to form an anti-government constituency of its own.

The citizen, fed up at being taken for granted, takes matters into his own hands, to challenge the official worldview.

What triggered this into the public domain is something prosaic. A Chinese Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) called Suqui presented a paper to the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) in what was to have been a closed-door session.

It was perhaps franker than it would have been if it knew what it said would be made public. The guarantee of anonymity was breached, and what it said soon became a contentious political issue.

But it was only a spark; the dry tinder was not collected in a day; it took 30 years for that explosive mix today.

The Lunas by election, which followed, revealed the unpalatable realisation that the Barisan Nasional (BN) government is in trouble with the ground, its old worldviews of what is right and proper challenged by its former supporters, now in the opposition.

The Chinese and Indians demand a more equitable position in Malaysian society, a rebellion evident in the non-Malay component parties in the governing BN.

Other crises followed. Chinese denied admission to Malaysian universities despite their superlative results, the Malay reaction of such vehement verbiage proof that unqualified Malays should be preferred over non-Malay qualified, and other unrelated issues provided the tinder.

The Petaling Jaya Selatan riots showed that this divide is not restricted to the middle class, but runs deeps in all sections of the community.

The failure of Malay dominance

It is the direct result of the Malay dominance which became official policy after the May 13 racial clashes in 1969. The Chinese and Indians were sidelined, but kept on to represent a multiracial society, but with no powers or role in policy making.

The small intake of non-Malays into the government was reduced further to a token, and those who rise up in ranks face a 'glass ceiling' beyond which they could not rise.

Opposition to this was curtailed by a series of restrictive laws which provide for mandatory jail on conviction. None dared speak out, insisting walls had ears, kept their own counsel.

However one looked at it, injustice became the norm because society would not rise to challenge it. The ruling BN, however, did not nurture the ground; it arrogantly dictated what it can and cannot do. Opposition, especially from across the bench, dismissed as of no relevance.

But emotions can be bottled for only so far. What brought it out into the open was the beating the just-arrested former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim got from the then Inspector-General of Police.

It sparked off the bottled emotions of the past three decades. A reformation of sorts is under way. People found common course with the political rebels not for what they stood for but to express their own anger at what happens around them; often petty, irrelevant items but which are important to them.

When pushed to the wall, people look for comfort in the Constitution. When they are not linked to a political party or group but encompass society, they get public sympathy, the government is forced on the defensive.

When this feeling is widespread through society, the courts hear constitutional arguments as never before. The judiciary, once known for threatening lawyers with contempt of court for arguing on behalf on their clients, seeks to find a neutral ground in their traditional role.

It believes it can only if it looks at justice not in the narrow confines of the law but in the wider constitutional framework.

That is what we see now. Not in its entirety. But in the first cautious step on a road the judiciary hopes it would bring it back to its pristine role. It is easy to blame judges and others for what happened, but they were in a mould that insisted they had the sole right to justice; others who disagreed with it, whether judges, lawyers or litigants, were sidelined and pressured with worse.

It is this that spells hope. But it is not going to be easy. It is a long haul. But the path would be easier if the judges look upon the Constitution as the starting point of why they are there.