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Press Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Wednesday) : The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Mohd Bakri Omar is trying to make light of the 12-document special edition on the Royal Malaysian Police website dedicated to opposition to the proposed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), explaining it away as an “inadvertent” act.

This is completely unacceptable and unsatisfactory, but I will leave comment for another occasion.  

Yesterday’s New Straits Times carried the  front-page headline  “IGP red-faced and livid: Bakri denies giving consent” on the posting on the police website.  In fact, it is the Prime Minister,  Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament and the 26 million Malaysians who should be “red-faced and livid”, not only at the posting but even more serious, its contents.

But let me respond to the claim by Bakri  in The Star today declaring the loyalty of the police of being “solidly behind the Government”.

This is the first Q & A in The Star:

Q. The public’s perception is that the police force has defied the Prime Minister’s call for the setting up of the IPCMC. What is your comment? 

A. We are solidly behind the Government and the Government knows it. We are public officers bound by rules and regulations. How can we go against the Government when we are bound by disciplinary rules? 

We have a track record that shows we are very loyal to the Government. Whatever that has transpired (the release on the police website confidential details of a meeting between the three associations in the police force with the Prime Minister) should not be interpreted as going against the Government or disloyalty by any member of the police force. 

At the meeting, the Prime Minister listened to all the arguments put forward to him by the three associations – the Senior Police Officers Gazetted branch, the Police Officers (Inspectors branch) and the Junior Officers. 

Malaysians have one question for the Inspector-General of :Police – whether the Police will be solidly behind the Government if the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi delivers his earlier  commitment to establish the IPCMC. Or is the Police’s loyalty conditional on the government’s submitting to the police pressures not to establish the IPCMC?

If there is no answer or response from Bakri to this question, it can only mean that the answer is in the negative, in line with the “inadvertent” posting of the “police revolt” against the Prime Minister, Cabinet and parliamentary governance recently on the police website.

Bakri should then be frank and be forthcoming about the police revolt and the plan of action which the police would embark upon under his leadership if the IPCMC is established as recommended by the Royal Police  Commission.

(31/05/2006)