PETALING JAYA, July 8 ― The police force and Home Ministry must rise to the challenge set for them by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak instead of acting like “cry babies” over the arbitrary detention powers lost after the repeal of the Emergency Ordinance (EO), a DAP federal lawmakers said today.
Barely a year after rescinding the colonial-era law, Putrajaya is now looking to introduce new legislation to provide for detention without trial whose removal authorities have blamed for the crime rate.
“The police were, in effect, a law unto themselves,” he said of their habit to “abuse” the law, adding that the answer to the authorities’ crime woes has been there all along.
“When the Emergency Ordinance was repealed in 2011, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that it had to be done away with as ‘technological improvements have rendered exile less then useful a deterrent to crime’,” Pua said in a statement.
“In fact the prime minister went so far as to call for the Malaysian police to change the 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, Datuk Seri Najib asked the police to now provide evidence to charge them in court.”
The PJ Utara MP further cited remarks by Najib that both the administration and its citizens have attained the maturity to “enter a new era where the function of government is no longer seen as limiting freedom of the individual but, instead, ensuring that the basic rights as enshrined in the Constitution are protected.”
But despite the prime minister’s remarks, Pua noted that Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar were singing a different tune and clamouring for the return of powers once available under the EO.
“It appears that both Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi and Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar are telling both the prime minister and Malaysians at large that the Royal Malaysia 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,’” Pua said.
And instead of supporting Najib in his push for legal and political reforms, Pua asserted that the Zahid’s ministry was even seeking to unravel the achievements the prime minister has managed to secure since announcing his intent during a Malaysia Day address in 2010.
“The Home Ministry appears to be fighting hard to reverse the political reforms put in place by Datuk Seri Najib, by claiming that the rising rate of crime nationally was due to the lack of preventive laws to tackle these criminals and insisting that ‘the police must be given enough power’ to deal with these ‘criminals’.”
Yesterday, Zahid said the new security law replacing the repealed EO may end up looking very much like its forebear that had allowed detention without trial.
He told reporters during an event in Putrajaya there had been proposals to embed preventive detention provisions into the proposed law, a second draft of which will be ready by September.
“I cannot announce it now, (but) there are proposals,” he said, adding that the police needed to be empowered to act against offenders.
Previously, Zahid had blamed the repeal of the EO for contributing to the spike in crime.
“When the EO was abolished, many of these criminals were released. Now they are taking advantage of the situation. Laws that are introduced to curb crime should get the co-operation from all parties,” The Star reported him as saying.
The New Straits Times last week reported Zahid as saying that 2,600 criminals detained under the EO were released when the law was scrapped and are now “roaming” the streets.
Police have sought to attribute complaints of rising crime to the repeal of the EO, but it is unclear which crimes have been directly linked to the released detainees.
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