AAB - keep your eyes on Police

This morning I posted PKFZ & IDR - the real priority for PM AAB where I said:

Until AAB ties down the matter of police integrity and professionalism, to ensure a law enforcing system of impeccable repute (and alongside with it, a respected ACA which reports directly to Parliament), any hope for resolution or mitigation to the various dodgy projects/developments and questionable and unaccountable public spending will just be wishful thinking.

Deal with the police (and the ACA) first - otherwise forget about improving anything else.

Now malaysiakini reports that Lim Kit Siang has asked the PM why there has been deafening silence on ex-top cop’s allegation of systemic corruption.

The ex top cop is of course Tan Sri Haniff Omar, the youngest officer ever to ascend to the Police top position, and from what I have heard, its first university graduate too.

Tan Sri Haniff bemoaned in his Sunday Star column in an article with a catchy title The fence that eats the rice (or in Malay proverb, pagar makan padi implying that the fence which had been erected to protect the rice field, meaning the police, has now turned around to devour the rice instead - work out what that means) that:

The police force and the Anti-Corruption Agency – two crucial institutions leading the fight against malpractices and corruption. Yet they are sadly disappointing in their inability to even clean up their own backyards.

TWO once greatly respected institutions have continued to remain notorious, using the word in its plain meaning but over the past 10 years for the wrong reasons.

[…]

I briefed the Royal Commission that police corruption was so extensive that a very senior ACA officer had confided in me and another top retired police officer that 40% of the senior officers could be arrested without further investigations – strictly on the basis of their lifestyles. One state police chief had a net worth of RM18mil. My friend and I had watched the force getting deeper and deeper into the morass of corruption.

It was strongly felt that the rot within the PDRM was so deep-seated that an independent, extrinsic monitoring authority was needed to help the IGP and the Police Force Commission steer back the force to the straight and narrow.

[...]

The Royal Commission Report was made public two-and-a quarter years ago, yet PDRM has still not burnished its image. It is still mired in controversy. Need I say why? It is so clearly divided into at least two groups at the top and, consequently, affects the officers below. That is why one group carries out arrests of alleged crime kingpins and the other group and the ACA have allegedly interrogated the arresting officers in the belief that the first group is eliminating the informants of the other group.

Whom can we believe when one group is headed by the IGP and the other by a police director backed by the Deputy Minister of Internal Security? They are at opposite poles. Both the IGP and the Deputy Minister of Internal Security have allegations of corruption thrown at them but both have been investigated by the ACA, the content of the reports to the AG we do not know. What we know is that the AG has absolved both of them. So, between the two, whom are we to believe?

Well ….. PM, I am glad you have ordered the mainstream media to lay off reports on the Negarakuku (as reported by malaysiakini) because I want them to focus on why you have extended Musa Hassan’s contract as the IGP for another 2 years, when his performance as a crime fighter has been abysmally disgraceful – our country is experiencing its highest crime rate ever.

What are you going to do?

Related:
Most Dangerous Place in Malaysia!