IGP must stop whining like a crybaby over EO, says DAP

An opposition MP has urged inspector-general of police (IGP) Khalid Abu Bakar to stop whining like a crybaby about the replacement of the abolished Emergency Ordinance (EO), and start strengthening the investigation ability of the police force.

In a statement issued today, DAP’s Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua urged Khalid to take heed of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s earlier advice that “the police must train themselves how to look for evidence”.

He was referring to Khalid’s statement yesterday that the planned law to replace the EO which was repealed last year would help address the crime woes in the country. 
 
Pua quoted Najib’s speech given to civil servants at the Razak School of Government in July 2012 which asked the police to provide evidence to charge suspects in court instead of just catching suspects and detaining them without trial under the EO.

He pointed out that both Khalid (left) and Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi were arguing that the country needs a return of the EO, or something similar to the EO with elements of detention without trial, in order to arrest rising crime in the country.
 
“The Home Ministry appears to be fighting hard to reverse the political reforms put in place by Najib, by claiming that the rising rate of crime nationally was due to the lack of preventive laws to tackle these criminals and insisting that the police must be given enough power to deal with these criminals.”

Pua claimed that there have been many case of abuse of the EO in the past because the police force is so short-handed in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that they banished most of the suspects to detention centres without ever completing their investigations, or collecting the necessary evidence to charge them in court.
 
“We must never let these incidents of injustice happen again. The home minister has announced that Ministers in the Prime Minister’s Department Paul Low and Nancy Shukri will lead in the drafting of the replacement EO Bill.  

“We urge both ministers to strongly reject any attempts to insert vague clauses with allows the police discretionary powers to detain a person for any period of time without a fair trial,” he added.