He also scoffed at Dr Mahathir’s claim that he had wanted to scrap the highly-criticised 1960 Internal Security Act (ISA), accusing the former prime minister of being flippant over the matter.
“How serious was he in wanting to amend or repeal the ISA and how far did he go? The way he spoke about it today shows that he was not very serious.
“It is like he said ‘let's abolish ISA’, then the IGP (Inspector-General of Police) said ‘no’ and then he said ‘okay’. How can you treat such a serious matter in that way? He does not seem serious at all,” Lim told The Malaysian Insider today.
Lim was responding to Dr Mahathir’s statement today that he had wanted to abolish the ISA during his term as prime minister but had faced opposition from the police.
The 1960 security law allows for detention without trial and a 1989 amendment under Dr Mahathir’s rule removed the option for judicial review, granting the home minister absolute discretion to extend or reduce detention time.
“ISA must be invoked when necessary, but when I was the prime minister I wanted to abolish the ISA but the police were against it,” Dr Mahathir told a forum on parliamentary democracy here.
“When I suggested that the period be reduced from two to one year, they said ‘cannot’,” he said, adding that he had to rely on the police as his advisers on national security.
Lim said that if Dr Mahathir had truly wanted to repeal the ISA, he would have had to initiate discussions among government leaders to obtain feedback on the proposal.
He added that the former prime minister could not refute the fact that he was home minister at the time of the 1987 crackdown and had been the authority who signed off on the ISA arrests.
During Ops Lalang, 106 individuals were arrested and Dr Mahathir later signed a two-year detention order on 49 of them, including Lim, his son Lim Guan Eng and five other DAP MPs.
“So although he claims that it was the police who did it, no one believes him because after the 60 days of interrogative custody, he signed off on the detention,” said Lim.
The Ipoh Timor MP added that since there seemed to be no end to the ongoing argument over the issue, the case should be revisited to ascertain the true details of the event.
“There should be a full visitation and inquiry into Ops Lalang. Let’s see once and for all whether there was an abuse of power and violation of human rights.
“It should then serve as a lesson to be learnt. Since the police are now collaborating with Dr Mahathir and we are giving different accounts, we need to establish the true facts of the case,” he said.
Lim also agreed that Dr Mahathir, the nation’s longest-serving prime minister for 22 years, could not have been less powerful than the police.
Former IGP Tun Hanif Omar confirmed Dr Mahathir’s statement today, claiming that he had indeed stopped the latter from abolishing the ISA.
In the same forum, the former police chief said that Dr Mahathir’s former deputy Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, now the opposition leader, had been the one to first raise the suggestion.
“Anwar said we should abolish ISA, Dr Mahathir said OK,” recounted Hanif.
He said he later urged the two leaders to reconsider their plans, and suggested they merely review the security law.
Hanif also claimed that Dr Mahathir had been consistent in his opposition to the ISA.
“When he became the prime minister, Musa Hitam told me ‘don’t invoke the ISA, Dr Mahathir will not like it’,” said Hanif, referring to the former deputy prime minister and home minister in the 1980s.
Events of the 1987 Ops Lalang crackdown were dredged up recently when Dr Mahathir was quoted in a new book by American journalist Tom Plate as saying that he had met all opposition members before the operation and had assured them that they would not be arrested.
Dr Mahathir also insisted that he had not thought it necessary to arrest the opposition leaders but had no choice but to accept that the police believed otherwise. - Malaysian Insider
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