Media
Statement by Tony Pua, DAP National Publicity Secretary and Member of
Parliament for Petaling Jaya Utara in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, 8 July 2013
When the
Emergency Ordinance (EO) was repealed in 2011, the Prime Minister Dato’ Seri
Najib Razak announced that it had to be done away with as “technological
improvements has rendered exile less then useful a deterrent to crime”.
In a
speech to civil servants at the Razak School of Government in July 2012, he
said that “in the old days, it was easy, if someone was bad, we just catch them
and send them to places like Pasir Puteh, or maybe Jerantut. But nowadays, it is useless as no matter how
far you send them, with their cellphones, they can still do their work (commit
crime).”
In fact
the Prime Minister went so far as to call for the Malaysian police must now
change they way they work. He said that
“now police must train themselves how to look for evidence.” Instead of just catching suspects and
chucking them into EO detention, Dato’ Seri Najib asked the police to now
provide evidence to charge them in court.
Earlier
in April 2012, Dato’ Seri Najib also argued in his speech at the the
installation of Sultan of Kedah Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah as the 14th
Yang di-Pertuan Agong that “the Government believes that after more than half a
century of practising democracy since Independence, Malaysians have reached a
high level of maturity… In view of this, we are now ready to enter a new era
where the function of Government is no longer seen as limiting freedom of the
individual but, instead, of ensuring that the basic rights as enshrined in the
Constitution are protected”.
However,
now both the Home Minister, Dato’ Seri Zahid Hamidi and the Inspector General
of Police (IGP), Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar are telling us that we need a return
of the EO, or something similar to the EO with elements of detention without
trial, in order to arrest rising crime in the country.
It
appears that both Dato’ Seri Zahid Hamidi and Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar are
telling both the Prime Minister and Malaysians at large that the Royal
Malaysian Police, after being “pampered” by the EO for the past 42 years, are
completely unable to “look for evidence.. and provide evidence to charge
[criminals] in court”.
The Home
Ministry appears to be fighting hard to reverse the political reforms put in
place by Dato’ Seri Najib, by claiming that the rising rate of crime nationally
was due to the lack of preventive laws to tackle these criminals and insiting
that “the police must be given enough power” to deal with these “criminals”.
According
to a Berita Harian report yesterday, Tan Sri Khalid also said that those who
had criticised the police in its crime-busting capability should back this new
law.
Malaysians
are telling Tan Sri Khalid and all the supporters of the EO that criticising
the police in its crime-busing capability is a call for them to improve their
efficiency and professionalism. It is certainly
not a call to provide the police with unreasonable powers to detain “suspects”
without those accused for crime a day in court.
There
have been many case of abuse of the EO in the past where youths in their teens
were first detained for 60 days and subsequently banished to Johor, Kedah and
Pahang separately for two years, simply for alleged motorcycle theft. These abuses and injustice occurs because the
police force is so short handed in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID),
that they banished most of them to various detention centres throughout the
country without ever completing their investigations, or collecting the
necessary evidence to charge these suspects in a court of law. The police were in effect, a law unto
themselves.
We must
never let these incidents of injustice happen again. The Home Minister have announced that
Ministers in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Paul Low and Nancy Shukri
will lead in the drafting of the replacement EO Bill. We call upon both of these Ministers to
strongly reject any attempts to insert vague clauses with allows the Police
discretionary powers to detain a person for any period of time without a fair
trial.
In this
case, we strongly endorse the Prime Minister’s call that “the police must now
train themselves how to look for evidence… Instead of just catching suspects
and chucking them into EO detention”.
The IGP should stop whining incessantly like a cy baby about the inability to throw any
suspect he likes into detention and start whipping the Royal Malaysian Police
into shape, particularly by undertaking the reforms recommended in the 2005 Tun
Dzaiddin Royal Commission of Inquiry Report.
Tiada ulasan:
Catat Ulasan