When DAP Penang State Assemblyman for Komtar, Ng Wei Aik, lodged a police report against the Second Finance Minister Datuk Husni Hanadzlah for uttering racially inflammatory remarks on Tuesday, there was an immediate response from the Federal CID director Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Mohd Zinin who was in Penang at the time.
Bakri asked at a news conference: “Do you want the police to fight crime or investigate political matters?”
The answer is clear and unequivocal, the first task of the police is to fight crime and to ensure that Malaysians, investors and tourists feel safe from crime and are liberated from the fear of crime – two major failures of the Malaysian police in the past decade.
Despite the establishment of a Royal Police Commission and its recommendations in 2005 to create an efficient, incorruptible, professional world-class police service in Malaysia, crime index in the country has continued to mount until the sixth Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak had to admit that it is one of the six priority challenges of his administration.
Despite all the publicity of KPI (key performance index) and NKRAs (National Key Result Areas) in fighting crime in the past year, the police has yet to break the back of the problem of high crime rate and prevalent fear of crime among Malaysians, tourists and investors – the very definition of an unsafe country!
Nobody will agree more with Bakri that the first task of the police is to fight crime and not to get involved in political matters – but this is something that the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan and the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein do not seem to grasp.
Otherwise, why is the Police harassing the Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, two Penang Deputy Chief Ministers Mansor Othman and Professor P. Ramasamy, Penang Exco members including Abdul Malik Kassim and Chow Kon Yeow and Pakatan Rakyat national leaders like Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim – with the police lodging 11 of the 12 police reports against the PK leaders themselves?
Although the Inspector-General of Police has denied bias and claimed that the police have lodged reports against politicians from both sides of the political divide, Musa has not been able to cite the instances when the Police had lodged reports against the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, Barisan Nasional Chief Ministers and Mentris Besar or taken action against them!
Can Musa provide the answers? Of course not, because this has never been done!
It is precisely because key national institutions, like the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, have allowed themselves to be used as catspaws in the Umno/Barisan Nasional political agenda and chessboards and failed in their primary duties (to fight crime for police and to combat corruption for MACC) that they have not been able to regain national and international confidence about their efficiency, competence, professionalism and integrity.
With the police recently lodging 11 reports against Pakatan Rakyat leaders, the Malaysian police must have set a record in the most number of “political” reports it had lodged in such a short span of time.
Why is this taking place under Hishammuddin as Home Minister?
Is Hishammuddin going to involve police in greater political harassment of Pakatan Rakyat leaders when he should be asking the police to single-mindedly fight crime to make Malaysia a safe country again for Malaysians, foreign investors and tourists?