Call on Tun Haniff Omar to clear the air about whether Chin Peng did submit his application to return home within the stipulated one year period

Yesterday, former Inspector General of Police Tun Haniff Omar has dismissed calls for the remains of former Communist Party of Malaya leader Chin Peng to be brought back to Malaysia due to a lot of harm done by Chin Peng to Malaysia and its people.

According to Haniff, Chin Peng and his followers had refused an offer to return to the country within a year of signing the peace accord in 1989.

"When Chin Peng finally applied in 2005 to return to Malaysia, the boat had sailed and there was absolutely no reason to admit him back into the country unless he could prove that he had applied to return within that one-year window, which he couldn't," Haniff told The Malaysian Insider in a text message yesterday.

A big question that has now arisen and which Tun Haniff should answer is whether Chin Peng did or did not submit his application within the stipulated period?

Let me first draw Tun Haniff’s attention to a report dated 2 December 2009 by Debra Chong of The Malaysian Insider, titled “What Price Malaysia’s Honour?”

Parts of the report say:-

Chin Peng, who has since reclaimed his given birth name of Ong Boon Hua, had applied to return to Malaysia, which the IGP Haniff acknowledged in an NST report dated April 28, 1991.

“Chin Peng submitted his application quite late ... towards the end of the period,” the English daily quoted him saying then.

On Sept 9 that same year, NST reported then Special Branch director Datuk Zulkifli Abdul Rahman as saying Chin Peng’s application “was being processed” and would be given the same treatment as the rest, after announcing that the first batch of 13 ex-CPM members had returned home.

The next day, IGP Haniff was reported saying Chin Peng’s application was being “studied.”

In the end, the cops denied the communist leader had ever put in his application to return.

Has Tun Haniff ever denied or can he deny that he never said what he said to NST in 1991, that is , Chin Peng had submitted his application quite late but obviously within the stipulated one year period?

Is Tun Haniff also aware of what Chin Peng had written about his application to return to Malaysia in his memoirs “My Side of History’?

In his final chapter, entitled “A continuing exile”, Chin Peng had said:

“After meeting my end of the 1989 peace accords, I had looked forward to a homecoming. In late 1990 I made applications to settle down in Malaysia but was rejected at the end of December 1991. ”

So what Chin Peng said appears to be consistent with what was reported in NST in 1991, as far as the date of his application is concerned.

If Chin Peng had indeed submitted his application to return home within the stipulated one year period, then Tun Haniff should explain why was his application rejected.