Any first-year law student would be able to tell you that an agreement concluded under duress or undue influence is no good. The proposed agreement for lecturers and students, outlining the dos and don'ts, is useless from the start.

Clearly the sponsors of the new mechanism of university oppression are badly advised. This gives us more reason to support university freedom and autonomy for the sake of the future of the country.

Crippling the country's precious human resource is not the wisest thing to do. The people know this. The government appears oblivious of this, but only because it has its own little, short-term interests at heart, its own political survival.

On another note, the setting of bail for the seven university students at RM2,500 each sets judicial standards back. It is not unknown that the Magistrate's Courts are not independent of influences from the executive as the officers are part of the Legal Service Commission.

The total amount for bail came to RM17,500! This is a hefty sum on any account. We must salute the generosity of the ordinary person on the street who helped put together this sum for the young people who are unjustly persecuted for exercising their right to a peaceful assembly on June 8.

And the government is happily (still) bailing out failed businesses of cronies in the name of the rakyat ! We need to remember these for 2004.