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Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi Should Rebuke And Over-rule Perlis Menteri Besar Shameful Suggestion To Employ Ex-Gangsters To Enforce The Law Press Satement by Lim Guan Eng (Petaling Jaya, Friday): Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi should publicly rebuke and over-rule Perlis Menteri Besar Datuk Shahidan Kassim for making a shameful suggestion that he intends to employ ex-gangsters and village bullies to enforce the law. Datuk Shahidan had expressed his loss of confidence with the municipal council enforcement unit for its failure to uphold the law allowing a proliferation of illegal squatters and hawkers.   For Datuk Shahidan the only way for the enforcement unit to earn respect from the public is to engage ex-gangsters and village bullies who do not have criminal records. Such a ridiculous statement would have been laughed off as a stupid joke if it had not come out from a Menteri Besar who is also an UMNO Supreme Council.   How can Datuk Shahidan behave so irresponsibly as to even think of asking ex-gangsters to enforce the law? He must be naïve if he believes he can find ex-gangsters without criminal records for if they do not have a criminal record, how are they known as ex-gangsters. Is UMNO so bereft of talented leaders and members, they have got to resort to ex-gangsters to do the job.   At a time when the government is trying to emphasise and strengthen moral values in schools, especially wiping out the problem of school bullies that have caused injuries and even deaths to school-children, DAP is shocked that the Perlis Menteri Besar is thinking of making them respectable by employing bullies and ex-gangsters to enforce the law. Has Datuk Shahidan forgotten the expression “harap pagar jaga padi, pagar makan padi.”   If Datuk Shahidan enforcement personnel are ineffective, he should sack them. Or replace them from retired police or army personnel with clean records. To reward ex-gangsters and bullies just not with any official government post but as an enforcement personnel would appear to accept their unhealthy past. Datuk Shahidan should not give a wrong message to our young that it is okay to behave like a gangster or a bully.   Datuk Shahidan’s idea of employing ex-gangsters as enforcement officials is the latest in a series of controversial ideas. He had proposed a 48 km bridge from Pulau Langkawi to Perlis, Perlis as a centre of traditional massage to cure impotency amongst males and a 10 pm curfew for all youngsters below 18 threatening them with punishment if caught in the public after 10 pm. Datuk Shahidan should seek counseling or advice from the Prime Minister if he runs out of ideas how to resolve problems facing the state instead of resorting to curfews or ex-gangsters..  (5/11/2004) * Lim Guan Eng, DAP Secretary-General