MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The Thirty Four Million ringgit police man

THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE POLICE issues a damning report. The police are corrupt, abusive, high-hand, obsolete, behind the times, stuck in a groove, take the law into their hands. So damning that it recommends 125 possible ways to revamp it to what it should be: as guardians of law and order. It reveals corruption so bad that one police officer admits to assets of RM34 million. This is but a tip of the iceberg. It strains credulity that only one police officer is corrupt in a police force that is now shown in an official investigation to be gangsters in uniform. But how is this rectified? The cabinet will, of course, discuss each recommendation "in depth"; the Prime Minister is concerned at its contents – which suggests something more sinister, that as the political head of the police force he did not know, and was kept in the dark, what the report revealed; the deputy prime minister says the police, not the government, should look into it. In other words, the official reaction is a prelude to official inaction. Let a few months pass by, and it is back to business as usual in the police force.

The spin on the royal commission report ignores the police shortcomings, ignoring what the police force is for. A man is arrested in a crackdown on illegal immigrants and foreign workers. A Nepali, Mangal Bahadur Gurung, is caught. He has on him photostat copies of his documents. He does not speak Malay. He is in the company of those who did not have official papers. The super efficient police, we are told, could not find out that he had a valid work permit but had on him photostat copies of his documents, did not speak Malay, in fact made him confess the is an illegal – despite one speaking only Malay, the other only Nepali with a smattering of pidgin Malay, rendering both questions and answers mutually incomprehensible – which the super-efficient attorney-general's chambers echoed to charge him.

He was convicted, ordered jailed and caned one with a rotan. His friend raised a hue and cry, and the man was released. What did the super-efficient Immigration Department have to say of this gross miscarriage of justice? Its enforcement chief, Dato' iskah Mohamed, insisted "it is Mangal who did not tell the authorities the truth. What our officers did is right as they followed procedures." But none of these super-efficient agencies of the government thought it unusual that he could not produce the official documents, assuming he could explain to the threatening officers, because his employers kept them. This is an offence under Malaysian law. Why is no action taken against the employer? Besides, he had not been paid ten months of wages. Why has the super-efficient Labour Ministry done nothing to ensure the employer is charged in court?

What is the official reaction to all this? Establish a cabinet committee under the Prime Minister to study the recommendatitons. This is wrong. Pak Lah is the minister in charge of the police. He should not sit to discuss what has gone wrong in his ministry. He is already overloaded. He cannot cope. Nothing will come out of it. Or if it does, glossed over. As far as the government is concerned, the police force is in fine form because it says so. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, throws another red herring. He could not believe – that is if you can suspend your belief reading this – a police officer could amass RM34 million. "It's a huge amount," he says irrelevantly, "let's find out a bit more on this ... as the name of the officer was never mentioned. I am sure the police will take the necessary action." The anti-corruption agency is quick off the mark to do its master's bidding. It will leave, as the tabloid press would say, no stone unturned to bring the culprit to account.

The curiousity here is the officer acknowledged he owns that much wealth. He is known to the commission, which had officers from the attorney-general's chambers in attendance, and this would have been transmitted to those who should know. The onus is on this officer to prove he acquired this wealth the honest way, by inheritance, by dint of hard work, by stock market speculation, whatever. In discussing the report, one man's wealth is irrelevant. It is a symptom of the main problem: that the police have become a runaway force and behave, often, like gangsters. One senior police officer went on, after his retirement, to manage a brothel in Kuala Lumpur. Corruption is endemic but unprovable because the laws are so designed that it is often the accuser who ends up in court. So the then deputy prime minister went to jail for corruption in which no money changed hands. Here corruption was used in the widest possible sense.

Corruption in Malaysia is endemic. It is only the authorities who insist there is none or at best manageable. It is in every sphere of activity. Anti-corruption actions are directed at the lowest rung of the corruption chain, and at those who quarrel with the National Front political leadership. It was this interpretation of corruption that landed the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in jail. He used his influence as deputy prime minister to order the police to investigate allegations of corruption against him. It was one he could not win. He had to be destroyed, politically if not personally. So, corruption was relied upon to twist the hands of those in whose hands his fate was. And the media orchestrated that he did not have a chance in hell to be acquitted. If he was, it would have forced the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, out of office. That of course was not the aim in persecuting and prosecuting Dato' Seri Anwar.

Several cabinet members, BN leaders and business men pride themselves that the anti-corruption agency had investigated them. That they are not charged is proof, in their eyes, they are not only not corrupt but incorruptible. This is not true. The ACA is defanged and does not have the independent powers of prosecution it once had. So it sends the report to the public prosecutor, who acts only if the government wants to set an example. The high profile corruption cases are filed, and it is the lowly policeman or postman or clerk who is charged to prove the government is serious about corruption. One has only to eavesdrop on idle chatter in the clubs and the up-end restaurants to learn who is corrupt, and how much was paid for a contract. More than half the cabinet have been investigated for corruption; they should have been dismissed and charged in court. But they are not. They would not ever.

A veritable Pandora's Box opens if the government is serious about reducing corruption in the civil service. Pak Lah started as a prime minister with claims that 18 high profile men and women would be charged for corruption. One cabinet minister and one business man crony were put on trial. It drags on as the prosecutor seems to have lost steam in prosecuting the cases. Pak Lah later insisted he meant the corrupt were not 18 men but eighteen sectors, suggesting that several times more cases than he had at first claimed. But the promise has gone cold, like so many of his promises. That war on corruption is all but forgotten.

The reality is it flourishes unabated. The standard claim to corruption allegations is to demand proof before investigations could begin. The fact is numerous police reports are filed, the most prominent by Dato' Seri Anwar. They have not been acted upon. Yet an unsubstantiated claim of corruption by Anwar was enough for his odyssey to begin. The truth is no one in government or authority wants corruption to be banned. How else could they afford living beyond their means, acquire multiple wives, numerous luxury cars, and other visual attributes of corruption? Or how the BN and its member parties could survive without it?

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