cookie-cutter comments

Just considering some things, more speculation and nothing concrete. I’ve been thinking about the current police abuse situation and trying to piece together some events that have occurred. I make some general statements, true, but more in the vein of speculation, so forgive me if I offend.

1. Playing Kingmaker
The by-election in Pengkalan Pasir. According to this post and a Malaysiakini report, Anwar Ibrahim is out playing Kingmaker for a PAS candidate. It sounds strange, or does it? Maybe it doesn’t. It allows En Anwar a way out of his own political desert, it makes dead certain he won’t be wandering about for 40 years. The problem with Kingmakers, I gather, is the fact that if they themselves do not have solid footing, their dependence on their favoured’s largesse tends to be precarious. Imagine campaigning for everybody and discovering all of them to be sharks in disguise, unless, that is, he’s sure about his ability to appeal to the masses: harried ex-PM-designate and now demagogue. This will be very interesting to watch.

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We’ve got to observe the situation now very carefully.

Mr Huicheh’s got 2 articles from the BBC and China Daily over at his website, link over here. The two articles mentioned are as follows:-

The BBC
China Daily

I think we’ve got to keep the pressure on, and LKS and Ms Teresa Kok are maintaining it; let’s hope they don’t stop halfway. What I’m more concerned about is how all of this can be swept up in a storm of protests that focus on racial divides; God knows how easy it is for such an incident to fall into petty bickering about race and ethicity. It’s about fighting for justice and maintaining a position based solely on that criterion: justice.

Already, there are murmurs about ethnic dominance in the police force. Just today, I had a discussion with an Indian colleague, and he was incensed by the whole event. Not because the policewoman was Malay, but because police abuse is rampant in Malaysia today. He related an incident where one of his friends was an Indian policeman who would stop by Chinese restaurants and demand free beer/stout. This is just another case of abuse, and should clue us in to the obvious defects of the police force in general.

Head over to carboncopy’s post for some analysis. I’ve tried looking for the Criminal Procedures Act in my office and can’t find it (I’m bloody shocked). Will have to get my hands on it, though. Of course, powers are confered on the Police via Act 593 by the Executive Branch, but I’d like to examine the actual relationship between the Executive and the Police Force, if such a relationship is defined in the Act.