Esscom and EAIC doomed to fail from the beginning

In February last year, about 200 Sulu terrorists from the southern Philippines “invaded” Lahad Datu in their bid to reclaim Sabah for the so-called Sulu Sultanate, killing several policemen during the ensuing stand-off with security forces.

The police force was initially mobilised to stop these terrorists but the weaponry employed by the latter was more sophisticated than that of the police, forcing the army to be deployed later.

The delayed deployment of the army and the government’s attempts to negotiate with what it thought was merely a band of criminals proved costly to the country’s image. The government was heavily criticised for its delayed and initial weak response to the invasion, which resulted in more deaths than necessary.

In the aftermath of the Sulu invasion, the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) was established to beef up the security for the entire east coast of Sabah as well as to ensure that such intrusions or any other kind of attacks would not recur in future.

Then came the first major security lapse post-Esscom. In November 2013, Philippine gunmen raided the Pom Pom Island resort, shooting dead a Taiwanese tourist and abducting his female companion to the southern Philippines.

The second blow came on April 2, 2014, when a Chinese national and a Filipina aged 27 and 40 respectively were kidnapped by seven gunmen from the Singamata Reef Resort in Semporna, which is one of the districts under Esscom.

After much public condemnation over the failure of Esscom to prevent yet another security breach, the authorities claimed that Esscom has no real power and could not issue direct orders to the various security forces because Esscom is not a command centre but just a coordinating office.

Esscom corporate communications head Newmond Tibin said that Esscom’s role is to coordinate inter-emergency administrative efforts between the police, army, air force, navy and the maritime forces. 

Esscom director-general Datuk Mohammad Mentek has no real powers at all to issue any command to any of the security forces.

The police, army, air force, navy and the maritime forces are still operating separately and Esscom does not control these forces under a unified command. Effectively, it means Esscom has not initiated any joint efforts with these security forces to develop preventive security measures for the state’s east coast. Given this scenario, one can only conclude that these security forces assumed that everything will be in order and the entire east coast will be safe after Esscom was established.

It looks like the powerless Esscom has been set up to fail from the word go. So, what happened to the RM300 million budget reportedly allocated to Esscom? Has the money been wasted for other purposes?

The farce surrounding Esscom was reminiscent of the abortive efforts to set up an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC). 

In 2005, the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on the police force had officially recommended to the government to establish the IPCMC to check power abuse in the police force and to reform the institution.

The government rejected the RCI’s recommendations and the IPCMC never saw the light of day. Instead, the government established the Enforcement Agencies Integrity Commission (EAIC) in 2011 to check on the police force and 18 other enforcement agencies nationwide, claiming that it could play a more effective role than the IPCMC.

However, the EAIC’s lack of powers to prosecute and shortage of manpower to carry out any investigative assignment nationwide led to EAIC being labelled as “toothless” and “useless”. The integrity watch commission simply has no real powers to carry out its roles and responsibilities.

About 4,334 reports were lodged from January 2005 to May 2012 with EAIC and about 70 per cent are still pending investigation with no clear indication on when these cases would be looked into.

Only a mere seven per cent of the complaints against the police force from 2005 to 2012 managed to reach the courtroom while more than half of the cases with EAIC have yet to be investigated at all.

Despite pleas from the previous EAIC chief executive officer for additional funds and manpower to discharge its responsibilities effectively, the money never came and the CEO was later transferred to a position of less importance in another government agency.

Like Esscom, the EAIC too has been set to fail ever since its inception. So, this is how the government takes the people for a ride – giving itself a veneer of responsibility in its initiatives which are doomed to fail.

My article was earlier published in TheAntDaily.com on 12/4/2014