Anwar Ibrahim has been released on police bail this morning.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi promised that there will not be another “black eye” trauma for Anwar as happened ten years ago.
However, the police has received a “black eye” of its own making, in its highly-provocative, unprofessional and unjustifiable arrest of Anwar by police commandos in balaclava at 12.55 pm yesterday – when the former deputy prime minister had already promised to report to the police at 2 pm.
This is the second self-administered police black-eye within a week – the other being the completely unjustified three-day 1,600-personnel police operation to lock down the Federal Capital and the Klang Valley to thwart a massive demonstration in Parliament on Monday when there was not a single protestor – causing great and unnecessary inconvenience and hardships to hundreds of thousands of people, plunging public confidence in the efficiency, competence and professionalism of the police to an all-time low.
The two self-administered “police black-eyes” in the past week raises the question whether the Royal Police Commission set up in the early months of the Abdullah premiership and which made 125 recommendations to create an efficient, incorruptible, professional world-class police service – with its most important recommendation for an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) – has turned out to be a total waste of time, resources and funds!