GEORGE TOWN, June 25 — The Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) should be immediately replaced with an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) as the public has lost faith in the former, said DAP MPs Zairil Khir Johari and Steven Sim Chee Keong.
The two said the public has lost faith in the integrity of EAIC especially when Mohd Nadzri Ibrahim was dropped from its task force on custodial deaths a week after they revealed his involvement in the fatal investigation of political aide Teoh Beng Hock in 2009.
“This confirmed our claims that EAIC has lost all credibility so it should be dissolved and immediately replaced with IPCMC as recommended by the Dzaiddin Report 2005,” they said in a joint statement today.
They pointed out that the EAIC has too many weaknesses following their revelation about Mohd Nadzri, who was not only involved in Teoh’s case but was also one of the officers that Bar Council recommended to be investigated over alleged evidence tampering.
One of the EAIC panel members, Datuk Salehuddin Saidin, was also revealed as the legal counsel representing one of the three policemen charged with the murder of N. Dhamendran before he withdrew from the case, they said.
They accused EAIC chairman Datuk Heliliah Mohd Yusof of behaving “more Barisan Nasional (BN) than BN” when she issued a media statement slamming opposition leaders by stating that “it is customary for opposition leaders to always criticise especially towards the government”.
“EAIC is like a toothless tiger as it is only able to hand out recommendations if an officer is found guilty but it is powerless to take any actions against the officer,” said Bukit Bendera MP Zairil and Bukit Mertajam MP Sim.
“Even the former Chief Justice Tun Abdul Hamid admitted that RM14 million was spent in a two-year period and the outcome was only two warnings and one disciplinary action,” they added.
The claimed that despite being allocated millions of ringgit a year, the EAIC was not implemented seriously and was like a temporary body with “borrowed” officers.
“Before this, EAIC chief executive Nur Afizah Hanum Mokhtar herself admitted that they only have one investigating officer to investigate 19 government agencies and in addition to that, this important position was held by an officer ‘borrowed’ from another government agency,” they said.
They demanded to know how many other officers in the EAIC were “borrowed” from other government agencies.
“Do these ‘borrowed’ officers still answer to their original agency or to EAIC? And won’t there be a conflict of interest if they had to investigate their own agency?” they asked.
They also questioned the qualification of these “borrowed” officers and whether they were fit for the job especially when their posts in the EAIC were not their original positions.
“The fact is, one of the main reasons EAIC was formed was to avoid the abuse of power that leads to deaths in custody but death-in-custody cases have increased to nine cases in these six years including four high-profile cases in the last few weeks,” they said.
They said this showed that the EAIC has failed to fulfil its main objectives and that it was not properly implemented.
“This is why we are calling for it to be dissolved immediately and for the IPCMC to be set up in its place,” they said.
The IPCMC should be given the authority to not only take action against officers found guilty but also to have the authority to recommend promotions for officers in the police force.
“This is to ensure that the promotion of police officers was done in a transparent manner and is based on merits and not on political influence,” they said.
They believed that by having the IPCMC in place, it would strengthen the police force and finally return the professionalism and integrity of the police force.
