Absence of trust

Trust – noun

- Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

- Confidence in a person on whom or thing on which one relies

- The obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed

- Charge, custody, or care: to leave valuables in someone's trust.

- Something committed or entrusted to one's care for use or safekeeping, as an office, duty, or the like; responsibility; charge.


The trust of most Malaysians in public institutions such as the Judiciary and the Malaysian Civil Service including the police and MACC is at an all time low. In fact one could argue that such a trust no longer exists today.

I read in The Malaysian Insider’s news article Five shot-dead by Kuantan police that police shot 5 robbers dead in Kuantan. It states:

Pahang CID chief ACP T Narenasagaran said … […] … based on a tip-off a patrol team intercepted the robbers’ car at the Jalan Kuantan By-Pass … the men ignored police’s orders asking the driver to stop and that the car accelerated away … after a high-speed chase the car was cornered near the entrance of the EPF builing in Indera Mahkota … the men also ignored orders to surrender and instead came at the policemen with parangs and sickles … Police had no choice but to shoot the men in self-defence.

But I was more attracted to the comments section, not because it makes for illuminating reading, but by the observation that most commentators didn’t believe the police had opened fire in self defence, so much so one pro police reader virtually cried out in frustration that the public who condemn the police for the high crime rates would also condemn the police for killing robbers.

I won’t bother to debate that killing robbers does not mean the police had been efficient in keeping a lid on crime rates from soaring through the roof or for that matter, will achieve that. The former (killing alleged robbers in scenes such as this as well as suspects in police custody) had happened before but the latter (high crime rates) has been and continues to be a worrying fact.

To compound their suspicions of, and disdain for police, there have also been the troubling allegations that the former IGP had dodgy company.

We may safely conclude that the trust we once had in our mata mata is no longer there. Of course it’s not fair to many of the men in blue because the police in this Kuantan case (mentioned above) could have been forced to take the drastic actions in self defence, but at the same time it’s also not fair to us, the public, when the police have frequently betrayed our expectations of their non-partisan obligation as neutral guardians of the law.

I don’t need to provide examples raging from the sinister deaths in custody to the police shameful partisan conduct in the Perak State Assembly (DUN) imbroglio.

Insofar as relationship between the PDRM and the Malaysian public has fared in the last decade or so, it has been a lamentable lose-lose situation.

The sad absence of trust extends to other public institutions such as the MACC. I won't bother to even explain why the public now believes the MACC to be indeed what Utusan said it is, a Malay an UMNO institute rather than a public one.

But the most wretched of all has been the Judiciary.

This is not say, as in the case of the police or some departments of the Malaysian Civil Service, everyone in the organization/department plays to the political tune. There are/have been very professional civil servants and I'll provide an exceptional example shortly.

But unprofessional civil servants may be likened to a drop of ink in a jar of milk, spoiling the entire content, thus bringing disrepute to the good names of those who have been thoroughly professional and apolitical.

Take for example, the original ruling on the infamous Adorna case. The judicial ruling deserves a place in the Hall of Shame for endorsing duplicitous scams for nine infamous years. Legitimate owners of properties in Malaysia were rendered unprotected and helpless by the unjust nonsense.

I bet Madame Boonsom Boonyanit who unjustly lost her property because of Eusoff Chin’a ruling must have cursed him and the Malaysian courts before she passed away. The poor lady was never ever to know that it took nine long years before a modicum of justice would reassert itself.

And those who had legally endorsed her loss of property through an obvious case of fraud deserved/deserve every curse in her damnation. It just beggars belief that a Malaysian court ruling had not only caused such blatant injustice but perpetuated and abetted the same shameful fraudulent practice.

The injustice of the Adorna case ruling was so flagrant that (now-retired) Justice Gopal Sri Ram, sitting in the Court of Appeals, did what the catchphrase in Star Trek claims (paraphrased): Go where no judge has gone before by boldly ignoring legal precedence.

Though criticised by many, Justice Gopal's amazing defiance of stare decisis (legal precedence) to rule in favour of the Au brothers in 2007 was eventually vindicated when the Federal Court sat early this year to overturn Eusoff Chin’s ruling of infamy.

And that’s not all with our once hallowed and much respected Judiciary. Today it suffers no shame in saying white one day and then black the next, as shown in several cases involving the sorry saga of the Perak State Assembly, in stark contrast to its (actually correct) ruling in favour of Dr Mahathir as PM for sacking Anwar Ibrahim.

To cap all these, the Chief Secretary proved to be no better in demonstrating the once-apolitical nature of the Malaysian Civil Service and their observance of the Civil Service code of conduct have indeed been mortally wounded since more than a decade ago, when he supported the most biadap Penang State Development Officer who had the unprofessional temerity to launch his politically inclined diatribe at an UMNO forum against a people’s representative, the Chief Minister of Penang.

As head of the Malaysian Civil Service, Mohd Sidek should have known better to instead counsel, if not sack, that errant and most unprofessional (so-called) public servant.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property - Thomas Jefferson