Is ours a quasi police state?
This question has returned to trouble us after the events of the past two weeks.
The deaths of five criminals suspects, two of them unarmed, in a shootout with police in Penang a fortnight ago; the questioning of schoolchildren by police without the kids being chaperoned by their parents; and the midnight detention and questioning of an octogenarian literary laureate, have all combined to suggest that the civil authority oversight of the police force, the norm in constitutional government, can be slack in Malaysia.
Cops who are trigger-cavalier, who are unabashed about questioning adolescents lacking a guardian's watching brief, and who can corral an elderly luminary in the dead of night to ask after a matter which by no stretch of the imagination can be construed as unpatriotic - are questions of distressing import to rights-conscious citizens.
A couple of years back, Malaysians had an intimation that ours may be a quasi police state when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad revealed that the infamous ISA arrests of 1987 were carried out by the police despite his reservations about it.
Mahathir (right) was reminiscing about the arrests in which more than 100 politicians, mainly from the opposition, and social activists were detained in October of that year amid rising tensions over racial and mother-tongue education issues.
It was a grim period of our country's history and it marked an authoritarian turn in the premiership of Mahathir, then in the sixth year of a 22-year tenure, a span that in its later stages was characterised by the increasing centralisation of power in the office of the prime minister of the country.
Expatiating on the arrests to an American author of a compilation on Asian leaders who had made a big impact on their countries, Mahathir tried to distance himself from it, revealing that as the home minister in 1987, he was not in favour of the arrests but that the inspector-general of police, on the advice of the Special Branch director, had maintained that the detentions were imperative to defuse sectarian tensions.
Nowhere in the wording of the Internal Security Act, a draconian holdover from the British colonial era (repealed last year), did it allow for the police to override the elected civil authority on the question of political detentions.
The decision to detain under the ISA was solely the discretion of the home minister, on the advice, no doubt, of the police.
But in Mahathir's extenuations to the American author, the former PM said he had opposed the arrests but he had to defer to the police advice on the matter.
In other words, the country in October 1987 was very nearly a police state because the police view on the internal security situation overrode the elected authority's perception.
Muddled conception
Nuances are important in matters of democratic governance as muddled conceptions often lead to sorry realities.
Tragically, it was former Lord President Suffian Hashim who gave voice to a muddled conception of where the balancing authority was when the executive authority overreached in a democratic polity.
The former chief judge was asked in an interview in December 1981 with Fajar, a newsletter for Malaysian students reading law in Britain, where the remedy lay when the executive arrogated to itself overweening powers.
Suffian said the remedy lay in electing more Karpal Singhs and Lim Kit Siangs to Parliament.
The interviewer must have been expecting that Suffian would have argued for judicial review of transgressive actions of the executive as the remedy.
Cognisant as he must have been of our gerrymandered parliamentary constituencies in which one vote in Gua Musang can be worth three in Puchong, Suffian could not realistically have expected that the nostrum for executive transgression was in electing more opposition parliamentarians who would be for more checks on executive power.
Today, because of gerrymandered constituency delineations, not even a 51 percent take of the popular vote at Election 2013 has enabled the opposition to come within hailing distance of the winners who were almost four percentage points adrift in the popular stakes.
Years after he gave vent to his astonishing view of where the relief lay in the face of an imperial executive, Suffian would publicly wring his hands in frustration at the - in his own words - "shameful" spectacle of the judicial impeachment in 1988 of Salleh Abas (left), his successor by two removes as the country's chief judge.
By that time, however, his laments were cries over split milk, but there was no revisionism about his opinion of where the remedy lay.
Today, of course, an imperial executive does not just encompass the actions stemming from the office of the prime minister, but also from the IGP and his force, not to mention the Registrar of Societies such that it may be idle to talk of the country being a quasi police state.
It more nearly is a coercive apparatus in the deceptive garb of a democracy.
This question has returned to trouble us after the events of the past two weeks.
The deaths of five criminals suspects, two of them unarmed, in a shootout with police in Penang a fortnight ago; the questioning of schoolchildren by police without the kids being chaperoned by their parents; and the midnight detention and questioning of an octogenarian literary laureate, have all combined to suggest that the civil authority oversight of the police force, the norm in constitutional government, can be slack in Malaysia.
Cops who are trigger-cavalier, who are unabashed about questioning adolescents lacking a guardian's watching brief, and who can corral an elderly luminary in the dead of night to ask after a matter which by no stretch of the imagination can be construed as unpatriotic - are questions of distressing import to rights-conscious citizens.
A couple of years back, Malaysians had an intimation that ours may be a quasi police state when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad revealed that the infamous ISA arrests of 1987 were carried out by the police despite his reservations about it.
Mahathir (right) was reminiscing about the arrests in which more than 100 politicians, mainly from the opposition, and social activists were detained in October of that year amid rising tensions over racial and mother-tongue education issues.It was a grim period of our country's history and it marked an authoritarian turn in the premiership of Mahathir, then in the sixth year of a 22-year tenure, a span that in its later stages was characterised by the increasing centralisation of power in the office of the prime minister of the country.
Expatiating on the arrests to an American author of a compilation on Asian leaders who had made a big impact on their countries, Mahathir tried to distance himself from it, revealing that as the home minister in 1987, he was not in favour of the arrests but that the inspector-general of police, on the advice of the Special Branch director, had maintained that the detentions were imperative to defuse sectarian tensions.
Nowhere in the wording of the Internal Security Act, a draconian holdover from the British colonial era (repealed last year), did it allow for the police to override the elected civil authority on the question of political detentions.
The decision to detain under the ISA was solely the discretion of the home minister, on the advice, no doubt, of the police.
But in Mahathir's extenuations to the American author, the former PM said he had opposed the arrests but he had to defer to the police advice on the matter.
In other words, the country in October 1987 was very nearly a police state because the police view on the internal security situation overrode the elected authority's perception.
Muddled conception
Nuances are important in matters of democratic governance as muddled conceptions often lead to sorry realities.
Tragically, it was former Lord President Suffian Hashim who gave voice to a muddled conception of where the balancing authority was when the executive authority overreached in a democratic polity.
The former chief judge was asked in an interview in December 1981 with Fajar, a newsletter for Malaysian students reading law in Britain, where the remedy lay when the executive arrogated to itself overweening powers.
Suffian said the remedy lay in electing more Karpal Singhs and Lim Kit Siangs to Parliament.
The interviewer must have been expecting that Suffian would have argued for judicial review of transgressive actions of the executive as the remedy.
Cognisant as he must have been of our gerrymandered parliamentary constituencies in which one vote in Gua Musang can be worth three in Puchong, Suffian could not realistically have expected that the nostrum for executive transgression was in electing more opposition parliamentarians who would be for more checks on executive power.
Today, because of gerrymandered constituency delineations, not even a 51 percent take of the popular vote at Election 2013 has enabled the opposition to come within hailing distance of the winners who were almost four percentage points adrift in the popular stakes.
Years after he gave vent to his astonishing view of where the relief lay in the face of an imperial executive, Suffian would publicly wring his hands in frustration at the - in his own words - "shameful" spectacle of the judicial impeachment in 1988 of Salleh Abas (left), his successor by two removes as the country's chief judge.By that time, however, his laments were cries over split milk, but there was no revisionism about his opinion of where the remedy lay.
Today, of course, an imperial executive does not just encompass the actions stemming from the office of the prime minister, but also from the IGP and his force, not to mention the Registrar of Societies such that it may be idle to talk of the country being a quasi police state.
It more nearly is a coercive apparatus in the deceptive garb of a democracy.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.
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