It was strange reading reports that the private member's bill to repeal the Internal Security Act (ISA) was endorsed by some legal group not necessarily the Bar Council ('Human rights NGO refutes Bar Council's allegation', Aug 25). Why the Kuala Lumpur Legal Aid Centre (which allegedly endorsed the Bill) did not clear the air is curious.

It was even stranger that Mah Weng Kwai, currently chairperson of the Bar Council, was quick to point out that the Bar Council should not be mistaken as an NGO or even a member of Suaram. Why lawyers choose to make these statements escapes some of us. The 'us versus them' stance is pedantic.

I hope Mr Mah knew that lawyers several years ago sent out a memorandum to the authorities to abolish the ISA. This was a campaign spearheaded at the Bar by the Human Rights Subcommittee.

The Bar Council should have taken a fresh and creative lead to abolish the ISA. Are not lawyers the high priests of the rule of law and human rights? Instead Mr Mah chose to bicker and distance the Malaysian Bar from one of the most concerted strategy in repealing the ISA since it first appeared in the Emergency of 1945.

Now we are told that the Bar Council is opposing the challenge to section 46A of the Legal Profession Act initiated by R Sivarasa whom I am told was one of the lawyers who lobbied for the creation of the Human Rights Subcommittee several years ago.

Now one thinks that lawyers at the Malaysian Bar must now revisit carefully circumstances of the last AGM where Mah ousted the then chairperson, Sulaiman Abdullah, a well-respected human rights defender and activist since his teaching days in Universiti Malaya.

The stories of that AGM made it to the mainstream press! Perhaps lawyers have overlooked something there after all?