Today is Malaysia’s 202nd Police Day and the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) has come up once again with a new slogan and a new song “Tegas, Adil dan Berhemah” (Firm, Fair and Courteous”).
The police cannot keep changing their service slogans every year. The most important thing the government must adopt is the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission’s (IPCMC) recommendations.
The people will be convinced if the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Aman will take immediate steps to ensure that the recommendations of the IPCMC are implemented in full immediately.
The people will be convinced if the perpetrators of abuse of power and brutality are dealt with quickly and severely under the law as the violation of the citizen’s civil liberties is a crime of the highest order.
While we are aware that many of our police personnel are hardworking, honest and reliable, there are far too many cases of police abuse of power and deaths in custody cases and the IGP must show that he is serious about stamping out this abuse.
It is an accepted fact that Malaysia needs a larger police force than the 106,000 personnel that we currently have but the IGP needs to study if there are enough of his personnel assigned to crime-fighting duties.
It appears that too many personnel are assigned to special branch and control work that has little connection to fighting crime. Does Malaysia need to maintain large numbers of crowd control and special branch officers? Is there a need for the police to be involved in political surveillance work? Do we need that many police personnel at political ceramahs instead doing their job of combating crime?
I look forward to the day when we have a police force that is in tune with the community and acts professionally at all times and that has the respect and affection of all Malaysians.
A firm, fair and courteous police should protect the rakyat, and only the rakyat, based on the principles of justice, without fear or favour.
All the nice promises of the IGP will amount to nothing if it is merely a practice of sloganeering. The IGP needs to do more than just making nice speeches if he is to win the confidence of the people that the police can be trusted and that the police are seriously tackling rising crime in our society.
The police force leadership is taking refuge behind slogans because it is quite clueless as to what the police force’s legitimate role is. So their style is to create the 3Bs concept (Bullshit Baffles Brains) and they have so far succeeded quite well until last Mar08 elections and now they have been found wanting.
They are all products of the”Lanyak System” of training and no surprise that the entire system predictably reacts in that fashion.
Careers that were vocations have been institutionalized into “just another job” to makan gaji and create employment. The same goes for nursing, teaching, national service etc.That is the present malaise.
You raise a very valid point- can anyone in the police force honestly tell that their resources are correctly utilised and maximised?
No wonder the IPCMC drew such a negative reaction.
Teresa, please take care- the rouges are back!!
No matter what slogan PDRM dish out, we want to see real police work.
1) prompt respond to all distress call regardless how trivial or serious the case is
2) courteous and professionalism in interacting with public
3) no abuse of power
4) more sensitive to victims, including rape victims and victims of domestic violence
5) stop being a tool of politicians
Badawi did have a lot of slogans but not much good they did, didn’t it?
They can have one and a thousand slogans whatever. End of the day, they are still the same inefficient, unethical running tools of the BN especially UMNO. As one have said, whatever PDRM say and do today and for that matter in future, the scenario can be best described as “old wine in a new bottle”. Unless and unless the present bunch of unprofessional guys are purged for good, the public perception will never ever change irrespective.
Full stop.