No more claptrap about ISA reform
Najib should first release all ISA detainees, close down Kamunting centre and suspend ISA for two years pending repeal or review
Lim Kit Siang
The Star yesterday carried a most misleading front-page headline “ISA review begins”, reporting that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak was honouring his promise to initiate a comprehensive review of the Internal Security Act as he had promised when he took office last month as the country’s sixth Prime Minister.
But thinking and perceptive Malaysians would have wondered whether this was the case, as many questions cropped up immediately when they read in the report that the government’s “first step towards reviewing the Internal Security Act (ISA)” was the formation of the Law Reform Committee under the chairmanship of the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong on April 29.
Is Najib really seriously about a “comprehensive review of the ISA” when the committee assigned this task is headed by such a political lightweight, who is only a Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department?
Just on this point, the whole idea of any “comprehensive review of ISA” could be dismissed as hogwash!
The story on the start of the ISA review took on a surreal and even “Alice-in-the-Wonderland” quality when it is further reported that the Law Reform Committee’s ”first step” to undertake a “comprehensive review of the ISA” would be a briefing session on Wednesday and Thursday involving the Legal Affairs Department and the Legal Aid Bureau.
What a laughable state of affairs! What has the “comprehensive review of the ISA” got to do with these two government agencies?
The surreal and “Alice-in-the-Wonderland” quality deepened when Liew made further revelations, viz: