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The Royal Malaysian Police Can Do No Wrong ...

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Norian Mai, will sue any who defames the police. Anyone who defames his beloved policemen would know they cannot be defamed wit impunity. He would know how powerful his words are. It is as fearsom as the state of the car the police had seized for some traffic offence and stored at some police stations in the Klang Valley. When you go to collect it, you would find a shell, the police men and cohorts having stripped it and parts sold to second hand parts dealers. In case his legal advisers are unaware of it, truth is a defence in a defamation suit. Going by what we know, he would have a tough task ahead to sue anyone for defamation. That the police cannot be trusted is not something we have come to expect now. In some cities, telling a police man, as my father used to in the 1950s and 1960s when we went on holiday, is a sure means to ensure it would be robbed when you return as my father never was.

A police officer is arrested for being a fence in stolen car parts, taken from cars under his responsibility. For ten years or more cars taken into a police compound would not return in the same condition, as some suspects are when they are released. As the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was after his arrest four years ago next week. The cars are systematically stripped, the more severely the longer they are in the compound. One man had his car seized. He went to collect it, accompanied by his insurance agent. The police station wanted more documents than he had. He came back 24 hours later to see only the shall of his brand new car.

The police in Klang go around in vans to seize motor cycles illegally parked. One boy found his missing, went to the police station to be told to collect it from Ah Chong, a motor cycle shop owner. That man, without his permission, had changed parts and demanded RM250 for its release. That it was done without his consent is no excuse. Pay up or lose your motor vehicle. The police station is no help. He had to pay. There is sound grounds to assume the money is shared between Ah Chong and the police men at the station. When you collect ten motorcycles this way, it is a nice line of additional income.

The newspapers highlights incidents like these so the public can get the impression the authorities do something about it. They do not. These newspaper reports, in which the issue is talked about at length, is no more than a smokescreen to hid the larger malaise in the police force. They are out of control. As the country. No one who seeks help from the police come away with a feeling his complaint would be investigated. When this is brought to higher attention, we are told the police do no wrong. But when a case does hit the newspapers, it is always the police man who is responsible.

Last week, when President Gloria Arroyo claimed a 13-year-old Filipinia was raped in a hold centre for illegal workers awaiting repatriation, Malaysia dismissed it. The police are beyond reproach. Now the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, promises to investigate. The problem is more serious: The police is allowed to do its worst, the home minister does not bother, believes the police version and is disinterested in an official investigation. But when the deputy prime minister, who is also home minister, would not stop to think if the advice the police gives him about the expulsion of illegal works is valid, and assume that what the police says must be in the national interest, it proves not that the police is infallible that it would run wild and be a law unto themselves.

Senior police officers are in shock at these revelations of policeman car thieves. They did not know, when they were officers in charge of police stations and districts that this happened under their very noses. Just go to the Damansara Utama Police station and look at the cars there that are positively unroadworthy as they were not when brought in. This is repeated in many police stations in the Klang Valley. When the higher ranking police officers are involved in scams -- do you seriously think, for instance, that pirated CDs for instance could be sold at random without the collusion of senior police officers? -- that the policemen pass by and engage in idle conversation with these stall holders as they sell their wares to the public.

Anyone with untrammelled power will misuse it. Parliament has no check on the government. The government is a law unto themselves. The Prime Minister is unchecked. No one can check him. The Deputy Prime Minister believes his Royal Malaysia Police needs no check. And it is a law unto themselves. One needs checks and balances in our lives. It is more so in governance. When that is dispensed with, as Dr Mahathir did in his 21 years in office, his government functions as a runaway chariot, there to do incendiary damage not good.

So the institutions of state are devalued, the government undependable, security in the dumps, the fiscal and financial respect of the country gone, municipal functions all but non-existent even in the Klang Valley. We are on the brink of a major disaster which cannot save us because the institutions which must do not function. It does not matter if it is the judiciary or the police force or even the Land Office. Name it, it does not function. You want to get a copy of the sketch of an accident from the police. The only way is to tell Ah Koh to get it for you. If you go on your own, you would have to go for weeks, kick your heels at the police station to not get it. The RM80 Ah Koh charges is, in the circumstances, cheap.

When policeman are underpaid and corruption is the only way to make ends meet, we would get a system like this. When this is combined with a highly corruptible, if it is not already corrupt, civil service, and a politician who can cut corners for a price, and the public is told to fend for himself, especially if he needs it badly, anarchy cannot be far behind. A high court judge does not trust his staff that all the files he hands are safely locked in his chambers. When money changes hands for desirable judgements, when files can be made to be lost for a little fee, when Land Offices do no return the change for work done, and its staff berate you if you ask for it, and this is not the odd clerk who does it but widespread, it is proof that our First World pretentions must collapse under the unbearable burden of Third World realities.

What difference is there then between Malaysia and the lawless that passes for law in Afghanistan? It is but a matter of degree. Not so long ago, the whole country would have landed on you for saying it. Today, the Prime Minister promises to investigate a rape. I can assure you nothing would come out of it. The rape, like so many in the Klang Valley, would not be solved, not can it. The next time your car is towed to a police station, you should be happy and overjoyed if it is returned to you in one piece in the same condition it was towed away.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my