Syed Hamid’s Folly

Syed Hamid Albar’s less than intelligent statements seem to be par for the course lately. His latest bark is a complaint really, the gripe being Malaysians are treating criminals as heroes on the one hand and demonising the police on the other.

He is of course, wrong on both counts.

No one is treating the late Kugan Ananthan as a hero. He was a suspect in various alleged car theft offences. I’d quicker look at Kugan as someone who needs to “go forth and stop sinning”, having first given him a “hair dryer treatment”. He is no hero. Few would have treated him as one and few are now seeing him as one. I cannot understand what this stupid minister was thinking when he suggested Malaysians were treating him as one. In any case, that is not the point.

The reason so many have rallied to the cause of his family and to the cause of past victims who suffered the same treatment as Kugan Ananthan, is they (we) are all fed-up with the Malaysian police. They are supposed to be law-enforcement personnel. Instead, they have no respect for the law and routinely breaks it. In fact they are the ones most often seen as breakers of the law.

The Malaysian police, like much of the machineries of administration and government in Malaysia, have been deteriorating for a long time.

Like many Malaysians, I too have had the misfortune of having to deal with them. When we become victims of crime, when we lose our identification cards, when we get into a motor accident, we dread the prospect, even the thought, of trotting up to the police station.

One gets pushed around a lot in the police station. The processes are often long and tedious and police are almost without exception, rough, unfriendly, rude and even hostile. At every turn the officer or personnel you have to deal with wants something from you. If no money if offered and you don’t have any connections, woes betide you. Very often one has to take a whole day off to either report loss of an IC or report a motor accident, no matter how minor. The idea is to make it as troublesome and painful as possible, and force you to “settle” the matter with on the spot bribes to the personnel at hand.

Everyone has a war story to tell. Many of these stories demonstrate the blatant corruption of the police. Many police would openly tell someone, over the counter at the police station, to make an illegal payment – a bribe.

When you need the police however, they would not show. When you report a theft, burglary or robbery, be assured the police would not turn up in time to provide them with a chance of apprehending the culprits. They would ensure they turn up long after the perpetrators have left the scene of the crime.

Every year, I would report illegal lighting of firecrackers. The police would turn up long after you called, and only after you have called numerous times. When they finally show up, instead of going to those houses where the offences have clearly been committed, they go straight to my house. How does coming to my house help solve the situation? Go to those houses where the smoke was still dancing around and they would have everything they need to investigate and even prosecute the offence. But that is not the idea. Someone up in their chain of command has taken big bribes to allow illegal contraband fireworks and firecrackers to be sold openly everywhere. Prosecuting consumers would dry up demand which would in turn dry up the bribes. That is not in the interest of the police.

The police is not a modern law enforcement agency. It is a modern version of the enforcer – the heavies – for the local mafia. That is evident if you examine the close relationships between the highest police personnel in the country have and known underworld characters. I know some of these characters myself and I cannot get used to the fact that they have close relationships with (past) IGP, deputy IGP and heads of police. That was when I was in Malaysia. From what I have heard, things haven’t changed. Police continue to have close relationships with underworld figures in KL, JB and such other places.

The fact that you continue to see foreign sex workers in large numbers, suggest there is close cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the underworld which run these prostitution rings. As in other illegal ventures.

We used to have an illegal Indonesian maid. We didn’t know she was illegal. She had what looked like a valid passport and what looked like valid work permit. We should have smelled a rat when the employment agency was housed in the local UMNO office in Port Klang somewhere. We went to this agency because we were promised a quick processing time. Alas, the haste was highly unholy. Obviously local politicians worked well with law enforcement agencies including customs officers, to procure these maids illegally. The losers were the maids and of course, employers like yours truly.

Malaysia is a joke. Yes, it was a haven for those wanting to make money by the truckloads and quickly. To do that however, you’d have to commit myriads of irregularities. Bribery is a cost of business in Malaysia which every businessman takes into account. It is the consumer who pays in the end. Ordinary Joe Blogs in Malaysia. Someone I used to be.

Kugan Ananthan’s death is the ugly culmination of the police doing as they pleased – including enriching themselves and protecting others in government or public service who also take bribes. When the people rally to the the family of Kugan Ananthan and want to attend the funeral, it is to tell the police to stop being so dirty. It is not to make a criminal a hero. As for demonizing the police, that doesn’t require any input from anyone. The police is already demonised. By itself.