IGP’s tweeting frenzy could backfire some day

Lawyers weigh in on the implications of the IGP resorting to Twitter in the course of carrying out his duties.

PETALING JAYA: When Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass created the micro-blogging website Twitter in March 2006, they could have hardly imagined how popular the service would get.

By 2012, it had garnered more than 100 million users and as of December 2014, Twitter boasted of more than 500 million users.

One of its unlikeliest has been Khalid Abu Bakar, whose twitter handle, @KBAB51, tends to bring to mind the Kebab.

Unlike the Kebab, however, Malaysia’s fascination with @KBAB51 is less savoury since it is the twitter handle of the Inspector-General of Police.

As his statistics show, Khalid is quite the Twitter aficionado. To date, he has posted 644 tweets, follows 63 other accounts, including FMT, and has racked up some 34,800 followers.

Khalid seems to have even married his duty of policing the nation with his apparent love for tweeting, much to the chagrin of many Malaysians.

Outside Malaysia, it even invited an article entitled, “Malaysian Police Use Twitter in Crackdown on Dissent,” written by Thomas Fuller and published in none other than the New York Times on February 11.

One example cited by Fuller in his piece involved the popular cartoonist/satirist Zunar, who has since cheekily referred to Khalid as “Ketua Twitter Negara” (National Twitter Chief). (The IGP is known in Malay as “Ketua Polis Negara”).

The relevant excerpt reads :

“Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, a cartoonist who goes by the name Zunar, was taken into custody on Tuesday after posting on Twitter a series of critical cartoons and messages.

“Mr. Khalid sprang into action after reading Mr. Zulkiflee’s post.

“This man is inviting @PDRMsia to take action against him,” he wrote on Twitter, using the handle for the police department, whose Malay initials are P.D.R.M. He instructed his subordinates to ‘please track him down and investigate’.”

Most recently, when Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua, tweeted, “B*****ds. Real B*****ds. Royal my foot,’”Khalid instantly posted his response which read, “@PDRMsia will call this YB and ask him to explain what he means by ‘Royal my foot’. Is this aimed at the Malay Rulers?”

Khalid appeared to be hinting that he might consider investigating Pua for sedition.

Numerous other examples abound. Khalid regularly tweets very public directives to his subordinates to investigate various persons and events.

Concerns have been raised recently as to whether such public displays of the police’s investigative powers are legal, and even if so, whether they are proper and advisable.

The Malay Mail Online reports today four legal experts rendering their opinion on the matter.

Parti Keadilan Rakyat lawyer Latheefa Koya believed that Khalid’s actions were “unprofessional”, “prejudicial in nature” and amount to a “clear abuse of power.”

Former Deputy Public Prosecutor Geethan Ram Vincent and criminal lawyers Rajpal Singh and Amer Hamzah Arshad all believed that Khalid had done nothing wrong in law.

“There is no standard operating way as to how to give out directives,” Geethan was reported to have said.

However, the matter did not end there.

Geethan questioned whether such information ought to be made public. “Police investigations have always been confidential,” he added.

Rajpal added that Khalid’s actions raise questions of morality and ethics.

Amer said that Khalid’s actions exposed him to the possibility of a civil lawsuit as his Twitter directives were taken as libellous in nature.

In addition, the IGP’s tweeting especially on politically sensitive issues and his apparent penchant for targeting members of the opposition may be interpreted by some as bordering on intimidation of lawful dissent.

It may also have impact both from a criminal and civil procedural standpoint.

In criminal law, a person is innocent until proven guilty. Public comments about investigations tending to show a person as guilty even before he is investigated, charged in court and convicted may have a prejudicial impact on any criminal proceedings that may follow. In the appropriate case, a real likelihood of bias, even if not amounting to actual bias, may scupper a criminal trial.

Furthermore, publication of a suggestion that a person is guilty of an offence even before he is investigated may be premature and defamatory and may expose Khalid, the Police Force, the Home Minister and the Federal Government to a civil lawsuit they can ill afford.