Are criminals bolder because of lax laws, or crooked cops?

NEWS ANALYSIS BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

The government may ignore and rubbish statements by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Guan Eng and Rafizi Ramli as opposition talk but when the man who used to command the 100,000 police force speaks about corrupt cops behind a brazen murder attempt, it is no longer an option to shrug shoulders and offer pitiful answers.

Nice try, but the average Malaysian is a lot smarter than the people who occupy positions of power. Unfortunate but true.

And that means that subterfuge and spin cobbled together in Putrajaya can be recognised at first glance for what it is: subterfuge and spin.

Before the general elections, mainstream media editors were told by Putrajaya to play down crime; at least take it off the front pages and bury it in the bowels of the paper.

The reason: the government wanted to support its election narrative that crime was down and Malaysians were safer now.

Today, the New Straits Times, the barometer of the Najib administration's thinking, and other mainstream media splashes the murder of Arab-Malaysian Development Bank founder and other killings that took place in the last 48 hours on its main pages.

The reason: the government wants public support for its effort to bring back laws which allow for preventive detention. What better way than to allow this image to take root in the minds of Malaysians, of a country where gangsters, mostly Indians, are running around with nary a care.

So expect the likes of Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar and others to slip in the view that only a new slew of tough laws can bring back some semblance of sanity to life in Malaysia.

The one gaping hole in this schizophrenic narrative is the attempted murder of anti-crime campaigner R Sri Sanjeevan on Saturday.

No less than the country's top cop Musa Hassan said that the shooting was linked to Sanjeevan's move to expose corrupt cops. Not Indian gangsters. Underworld figures. Botak Chin. Kalimuthu.

Corrupt cops

The government may ignore and rubbish statements by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Guan Eng and Rafizi Ramli as opposition talk but when the man who used to command the 100,000 police force speaks about corrupt cops behind a brazen murder attempt, it is no longer an option to shrug shoulders and offer pitiful answers.

In the scheme of things, this is as serious an allegation as judicial appointments being "fixed", foreign spies infiltrating the government service or political involvement in the murder of a model.

It just cannot be swatted away like a pesky fly. It merits serious and impartial investigation.

The troubling fact about high profile shootings of Sanjeeyan, and the now forgotten and still unsolved assassination of the senior Customs official, is that it creates the impression that the "bad guys" have no fear of the police. Or to be more precise, the ability of the police to investigate and solve cases.

No amount of preventive laws can help if the police have poor intelligence or no clue about who the bad guys are. Similarly, no amount of preventive laws can save this country if those entrusted to uphold and enforce law and order are rogues.

There simply are no short cuts in the fight against crime in Malaysia. No silver bullet or magic wand. Just a long struggle to reclaim the streets and the trust of Malaysians.

In the meantime, it would be useful for Putrajaya to digest what former deputy prime minister Tun Musa Hitam said during a press conference in Singapore this week.

He urged the government not to dismiss concerns of the middle class. "We have provided education to them, but yet, we have become less educated and haven't changed our mindset, " he said.