Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang in Petaling Jaya on Saturday, 2^nd January 2010: 

Are police reports by police/MACC against Guan Eng, Ean Yong, Dr. Pornthip and Suara Keadilan part of a high-level sinister design/conspiracy to clamp down and strike out at fair comments on important national issues?

On Christmas Eve, the Selangor Police lodged a police report of sedition against DAP Secretary-General and Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, for his speech at the Pakatan Rakyat national convention in Shah Alam on December 19 expressing national sentiments that the mysterious death of DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) headquarters in Shah Alam was a case of murder.

Three days later, the Selangor Chief Police Officer Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar alleged that the DAP Selangor Chairman and Selangor State Executive Councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah had “intimidated” the police in “directing” the police to stop their investigation of Guan Eng – when all that Ean Yong had done was to call on the police to stop their baseless investigation.

Yesterday, two MACC officers, Mohd Yusoff and Raub Ghani, lodged police reports against Suara Keadilan for an article in the Parti Keadilan Rakyat newspaper “which confirmed as murder the death of Teoh” as well as against Thai pathologist Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan for “leaking” the information to unauthorised people the forensic report of the second post-mortem on Teoh on Nov. 22.

In the Top News of 2009 for the various media, Teoh Beng Hock invariably topped the list for his tragic death at the MACC headquarters last July.

One electronic media even named the MACC “the Malaysian of the Year” – not for the breakthrough it had achieved in fulfilling its parliamentary mandate to spearhead an anti-corruption drive to catapult Malaysia among the least-corrupt nations but for so dismally and disastrously failing its mandate, or as Malaysian Insider has put it, MACC “stood out as an unfortunate symbol of all that is wrong in the country, unkept promises”.

Collectively, the police and MACC reports against Guan Eng, Ean Yong, Dr. character as they bespeak of a sinister design or conspiracy in high places to clamp down and strike out at fair comment on important issues and developments in the country.

Those in authority and power have got their priorities all wrong.

Instead of making Malaysians safe and secure in the streets, public places and even the privacy of their homes, so that gated communities are being dismantled instead of being installed at unprecedented rates in various parts of the country, the police are more pre-occupied with wasting precious police resources and man-hours on the political agenda of the Barisan Nasional to with its political opponents.

Instead of declaring war on corruption, the MACC continues to give top priority to its agenda as the catspaw of the Umno/Barisan Nasional political masters by declaring and continuing its war against the Pakatan Rakyat.

Unless the MACC can win public confidence by operating as an independent, non-partisan and professional anti-corruption body, it is heading for another run as top newsmaker in 2010 for perverting its statutory mandate and abusing the vast powers and resources entrusted to it by Parliament to combat corruption.

The police are also undergoing a similar crisis of public confidence.

*Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor