(Petaling Jaya, Thursday): The
Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Norian Mai should exercise leadership by
calling off Ops Warta II so that it
will not be reduced into a joke by being transformed into Ops Summons Server
by the 4,600 traffic personnel to serve 3.3 million summons or more
appropriately Ops Face-Saving.
Although
the Police and the Attorney-General’s Chambers have sought to explain Ops
Warta II farce by saying that the operation was legal, it is clear that the
police had acted on wrong legal footing and
advice in launching Ops Warta II where
the police had threatened to turn the country upside-down with thousands of police personnel
to put up roadblocks,
conduct house-to-house searches, ambush car parks of commercial buildings
and shopping complexes to arrest-and-handcuff-and-lock-up on sight
offenders with outstanding 3.3 million traffic summons which have not
been settled although the overwhelming majority of them had probably not been
properly and legally served!
Now,
Ops Warta II is explained as an
operation for the police to personally serve summonses and offer compounds to
offenders - after the Attorney-General’s Chambers have clarified that the
police can only arrest traffic
offenders if warrants of arrests have been issued by the courts, and that the
police have no arrest powers of their own over traffic offenders, let alone
arrest-handcuff-lock-up on sight!
Out
of the 3.3 million outstanding traffic summons which is the target of the
extended Ops Warta II, how many of
them are police summons (POL 257) or police notification (POL 170A), which is
notice of a traffic offence together with an offer for compound via registered
mail to the registered owner of the vehicle, or where the vehicle owner did not
commit the offence, to furnish details of the driver of the vehicle.
Both are non-arrestable
notices without the issue of warrants of arrest by the courts.
The
overwhelming majority of the outstanding 3.3 million traffic summonses must
belong to these two categories of non-arrestable notices. If Ops
Warta II is not called off, and to go into full operation on May 17, are the
4,600 traffic personnel going to station themselves at public parking areas,
shopping complexes and toll plazas to serve the 3.3 million oustanding
summonses, turning it into Ops Summons
Service?
This
is a classic case where it appears impossible for a government agency, in this
case the Police, to admit that it had made a mistake and that the entire Ops
Warta II had been based on bad legal advice.
As a result, the continuation of Ops
Warta II is more a Ops Face-Saving more
than anything else.
According
to a Bernama report, Norian Mai said that the
Ops Warta II operation had been
referred to the Attorney General's chambers, the legal officers at theHome
Ministry and 200 legal experts within the police force before its
implementation.
He
said: "I will like to stress that we are the leading agency in enforcement
of the laws and we will study the implementation of any regulation.
issue of lack of transparency among the force should not arise".
The
IGP should be concerned that the foremost agency in the country
to uphold law and order -
the police - has acted in a manner most subversive of the principle of the rule
of law, throwing up the great issues of accountability and transparency of the
police force.
It
should be a matter of greater concern not only to the Police and the government,
but to the 23 million Malaysians as to how the Attorney-General’s Chambers,
the legal officers of the Home Ministry and the 200 legal experts could
collectively proffer such bad legal advice as to launch Ops
Warta II turning the country upside-down into a police state, with ordinary
citizens threatened with arrest-handcuff-lock-up on sight!
Was
there not a single voice from the phalanx of government experts in the
Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Home Ministry and the police cautioning and
warning that Ops Warta II was based on
a completely wrong and mistaken interpretation of the law?
May
be, the Police should next time just give a tinkle to Karpal Singh to get his
second opinion before plunging the country into such chaos and pandemonium over Ops
Warta II.
If
the Inspector-General of Police finds it too big a “loss of face” to call
off Ops Warta II, then this is the
time for the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi to intervene in the public interest by cancelling Ops Warta II and directing the police to have
a dialogue with political parties, consumer groups, trade unions, the Bar
Council and other interested NGOs to devise a
satisfactory formula to effect the settlement of the
outstanding three million traffic summons without trampling on the rule
of law or going through the new farce of Ops
Summons Service or Ops Face-Saving,
wasting public resources and causing unnecessary public inconveniences.
(9/5/2002)