IGP’s public opposition to the IPCMC on 199^th Police Day yesterday an act of open  defiance  and insurbodination of Prime Ministerial and Cabinet authority

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Press Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Sunday) : The Inspector General of Police, Tan Sri Mohd Bakri Omar’s public opposition to the proposed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) on the occasion of the 199^th Police Day yesterday was an act of open defiance and insurbodination of Prime Ministerial and Cabinet authority to set the policy direction for the police force.

Although Bakri departed from his prepared speech at the launching of the 199th Police Day celebration at the Police Training Centre (Puspapol)  in the presence of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad  Badawi, omitting reference to police rejection of IPCMC, his prepared speech which rejected the IPCMC was read out to  all police contingents at state level.

In his prepared speech to the police throughout the country, Bakri said that the Police rejected 24 of the 125 recommendations of the Royal Police Commission, and that the police and various police organisations had made known their opposition to the IPCMC to the government, which included a briefing for the prime minister.

Bakri said in his prepared speech that following the police rejection of the IPCMC, “the government instructed the attorney-general to study and consider the best alternative to the proposal to establish the IPCMC”.

I find this version of developments on the IPCMC proposal most shocking, for it is a very thinly-veiled attempt to arm-twist the Prime Minister to accept a fait accompli – opposition of the Police, UMNO Youth and UMNO MPs to the establishment of IPCMC.

Bakri’s claim  that following police rejection of IPCMC,  the Attorney-General had been entrusted with the responsibility to “consider the best alternative” to the IPCMC proposal is news.  This is because what the Prime Minister had said was completely different -  that the Cabinet Committee on Implementation of the Royal Police Commission Recommendations chaired by him decided “in principle” on 24th January 2006 to set up the IPCMC and the Attorney-General had been tasked to make detailed proposals on its establishment.

The IGP was acting in a most unprofessional and irresponsible manner in giving an untruthful version to  all police contingents yesterday - that the government has agreed not to set up the IPCMC, when the Prime Minister had clearly told the country that the Cabinet Committee had agreed “in principle” to set up the IPCMC and that the Attorney-General is working on the details of its establishment, instead of finding “the best alternative” to the IPCMC proposal.

Is this the reason why Bakri did not deliver his prepared Police Day speech on the IPCMC  in the presence of the Prime Minister, although his speech was read out to all police contingents at the state level throughout the country.

Who is the policy-making authority in the country – the Prime Minister and the Cabinet or the Inspector-General of Police?

Bakri’s new version on the Prime Minister’s stand on the proposed IPCMC, which is contrary to Abdullah’s public statement of agreement “in principle” to establish it, cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged or uncontradicted – especially at a time when UMNO MPs had been improperly influenced by the police to line up, one after another, to disregard the national interest of having a clean, incorruptible, efficient, human rights-sensitive, professional world-class police service by declaring  their opposition to the IPCMC in the current  Parliamentary debate on the Royal Address.

(26/03/2006)