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Pak Lah, calling for a Royal Commission, says the people do not trust the police

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, now says it: the Royal Malaysia Police is not trusted. He says: "We want to make the police force a unit which can be trusted." He admits the public is not gung-ho about the police. He proposes a Royal Commission to report how it could be turned around. It would look investigate and suggest how it could, and how to reduce human rights abuses, police brutality, poor service and other ills that make the public afraid to approach the police. He was opening a conference of 300 senior police officers in Putra Jaya on 29 December 2003. What he said it is not new. The Opposition parties and groups have said so for years. What is new is that his implied admission that the public is frightened of the police.

The aim of the Royal Commission is to modernise the police force. But could it when the underlying problems are unresolved? There is a Police Commission to look into these, always has been. That a Royal Commission must step in must raise a few eyebrows for it is an open admission this Police Commission, which looked into the same issues the Royal Commission would, was negligent. Is there an avenue a member of the public can address his grumbles, grouses and complaints against the police? He could go to the Public Complaints Bureau, where his complaint would disappear into outer space. He could go to the newspapers. But they are not as keen as they once were. He, especially the Malay, is ready now to turn his anger into a vote against the government.

He says the police force should not be an employer of last resort. It must attract well-educated men and women. Crime is more complex by the day, a step behind or even ahead of the electronic revolution. The police force must have the men and women to stop it in its tracks. Pak Lah promises the Royal Commission would look into all this and more. He said the police must be careful when it dealt with people. The people are better educated than ever, they know their rights, would baulk at standing up for them. It is the first honest admission from anyone in high office of what could happen if it continues. But he does not go far enough. The RMP is politicised, and beholden only to the National Front (BN) government. In the two states where the Opposition PAS forms the state government, it looks to Kuala Lumpur, not the state governments, for guidance. The state governments in Kelantan and Trengganu cannot rely on the police on an issue the state UMNO unit is opposed to. For the police chiefs take orders from the Inspector-General of Police and the Home Minister in Kuala Lumpur, not the state chief minister.

But it was the Reformasi movement, after the arrest and humiliation of the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim in 1998, that destroyed much respect the people had for the police. It had been declining over the years. The police became a force to be feared. You would be given the runaround if you go to the police to lodge a report. You must have infinite patience, and time on your hands or dollops of cash to speed your report making. On top of that, you are often abused, and made to wait. Try, even now, getting a copy of the police report for filing an insurance claim or whatever. It would be ages before you did. Unless you typed the report and the copies before you came to the police station, pay the required fees and collect your copy duly signed by the station inspector. Bribery is not a word one discusses in police company in Malaysia. "Cari makan" is the right word to use. It is an art form. As the penalties improve, so the bribe. It is an open secret in Brickfields, in Kuala Lumpur, where I stay, that motor cars can be parked at will and even hog the road so much so it is dangerous to drive along the stretch of Jalan Tun Sambanthan where the restaurants are. But park in front of a shop which did not, or refused to, pay, and he would get a traffic ticket soon enough.

The modernising proposals Pak Lah talks of makes no sense if, right through the system, bribery is the only currency recognised. It is so pervasive so all embracing that it is common place. The Royal Commission should address this first. How to start the ball rolling to attract men and women to the police force who are paid well, with a strong enforcement branch to make it stick. It should bring the policeman back on the beat. He is now nowhere to be seen. Police pondoks are set up in odd places, but when you need the policemen he is invariably not there. The sight of a uniformed policeman walking by is enough to deter many from that chance attempt at bribery or petty crime. The police has had several programmes and proposals to bring them close to the people. But it is often for public relations, which is ignored once the minister had declared it open.

Trust does not come if they are not present on the ground. The policeman in Malaysia is a distant figure whom one would rather not tangle with. It is too costly. In time, in frustration, often, money. I know of crimes unreported because of this. Years ago, I was involved in an accident when a van behind me knocked my car one night. I spent eight hours at the police station, and had to come back several times before I could get a copy of the report to claim the cost of repairs from the insurance company. Now it is worse. Pak Lah probably does not know it - he would never ever be given a ticket for a traffic offence - but the traffic ticket is also a summons to appear in court if you would not pay the RM300 to compound it. If you decide to challenge it, you could well find it difficult to renew your car licence, for the road transport department and the police work in concert. A court decision has said this is not allowed, but try explaining that to the girl at the licence issuing desk at the road transport department. What helps UMNO and the BN, in election after election, the voter is not incensed enough to vote them out. But his patience withers. That is what Pak Lah wants to reverse.

There is one drastic way out of this mess. Make the police force reflect the population. This means more Chinese and Indians must be recruited. The Government shot itself in the foot, after the 1969 racial riots and the Malay insistence that they alone ruled, when it dismantled the multiracial services to recruit Malays: the armed forces, the police, the civil service, the statutory bodies, the universities. The government, as constituted, has no reach to the virtual alternate governments within the power centres of the non-Malay communities. Unfortunately these power centres tend to be gangsters and others of the ilk. It is not surprising that many gangster chieftains have obtained respectability by acquiring titles. Bribery and corruption is rampant in all this, and is as pervasive as in the police force. But in the narrow political calculations Pak Lah and his men bringing more non-Malays into the government is a Damoclean sword, especially when UMNO has yet to annoint him as its president.

It is nice to talk of a police force modernising itself on the run. But could it if the system is riddled with inefficiency, political direction, corruption, and other malaise? When police discipline is lax, almost non-existent. Far more serious than corruption involving the public is the corruption within the force, where policemen and those of higher ranks in sensitive jobs could only be promoted if they pay a fee to a higher up. This is of course denied. But in a number of cases involving high ranking police officers who had far more money than they could possibly earn on the sweat of their brow. Modernisation is not the problem. It is that too many in the service believe it is an easy way to live beyond one's means. This is built into the system. Is there a desire to change it? I doubt it. Could Pak Lah change it? I doubt it. So what else is new? Raising the issue of corruption is a political minefield especially when it is seen in Malay circles paradoxically as an anti-Malay move. Pak Lah says he does not court publicity over it. He is right. If he does not handle it well, it could boomerang.

[I wrote this for my column in Seruan Keadilan, the organ of the National Justice Party (KeADILan), in its latest issue, out on the streets today, 06 January 2004]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com