The Royal Malaysian Police is efficient, well-run and committed not to the country but to those who run it. To every one else, it is capricious, partisan, confrontational. No one wants to tangle with the police; a routine report of an accident can take you ten hours or more. It is one Malaysians want little to do with. The cost of coming into contact is too horrendous for many to contemplate. Let there be a hint of a demonstration, and more police armed to the teeth than those with grievances would gather. (Mark you, it stands by idly when UMNO youth or demonsrators praising the Prime Minister take to the streets.) Let Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim appear in court, and it moves in to decide who could observe the proceedings. The Prime Minister however will tell you we have a police force bar none. He should know. He is so well protected when he moves about, but even he would rather have the protection of foreign police forces which is one reason he travels out of the country so often.

When the police break up demonstrations or crack down on dissent, it has no equal, especially with flailing batons, tear gas and M-16s. When it comes to solving crimes or what they are paid to do, it would rather not. Look at murders unsolved. If you report a robbery, it would often be the last you hear of it. When was the last time a murder was solved with solid police work? Just two comes to mind: the murders of Audrey Mellisa and Dr Joe Fernandez, the MIC state assemblyman for Lunas. Where is the police where they should be? Look at the chaos of every day life that would not be if the police are around. Laws are made, and cheerfully ignored, because the police do not care if they are obeyed. Just one example: if you get off an LRT station and wait for a taxi at the taxi stand, you could whistle for one; for getting one is a mad free-for-all. Rules are cheerly ignored, and no one cares.

Every now and then, the Police would reaffirm its inefficiency deliberately and make the public suffer for it. Look at how they get people to pay their parking summonses. It did not nothing to chase after those issued them after 1999. We are told the police computer system is so up-to-date that summonses issued are immediately entered in it. So good it was, so it claimed, that the RTD uses it to force motorists to pay their summonses before it would issue licences for their motor vehicles. Yet those who could renvew their licences in 2002 are now told they have summonses not paid in 1999. How is this possible? The 2002 licence is issued because the police computers have no record of unpaid summonses. So, where did these summonses come from?

The police did not explain how hundreds of thousands of traffic summonses are allowed to accumulate, why its super efficient police computer system missed them, nor how the RTD issued motor licences when it should not. The current police crackdown on unsettled summonses is a form of extortion. The government does not have funds for their daily operation, and this is one means to collect them. This was the reason I was told for the police urgency when it cracked down the last time. But it also to inconvenience. Look at the queues at police stations of apprehensive people waiting patiently for up to eight hours to pay up. The police do not allow you to argue your case. If there is a summons against you that you had not settled in times past, you pay. If you want to fight it out in court, you could. But since you did not pay when you were asked to, you would not be allowed to renew your motor vehicle licence.

The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is also the home minister. He sees nothing wrong with this. He does not see it as yet another example of efficient police inefficiency, that all it proves is that it cannot even do what it is by law designated to do. He instead calls on those issued summonses to pay up and calls on them to settle the summons as quickly as possible. This is not the first, nor would it be the last, when the police would parade their ineffeciency to the Malaysian public. The police computer system is not what it is toted out to be. How could it when an UMNOputra who once sold nasi lemak or drove a taxi for a living is given the contract -- and his aim is not the system the police wants but make as much money out of it as he can? The system fails almost when it is installed. The policemen do not know how to operate it. A poor system which few know how to operate compounds it.

The inefficiency grows. With it an authoritarian behaviour in every branch of government. The government mantra is that computers and high technology is the wave of the future. It is and it is not. When work is routine, computers and high technology would help. But only if there is an efficient workforce behind it. A poor computer system can be worked at peak efficiency if those managing it know what they do. The best system in the world will gather dust if there is none who knows how to work it.

In Malaysia, it is the latter that is dominant. And it shows. Not just amongst the police, but in every branch of government. Instead of having an integrated system that links all the branches of government, in Malaysia we often have incompatible systems that is not centrally controlled, and computerisation becomes a nightmare. This is what has happened in the police system. In the days before computers, you commit an offence and you get a summons or an offer to compound within six weeks. With computers, it takes about six years. All it shows is how efficient police ineffeciency has become. The government has no incentive to correct it. For this has its uses: when it needs small change, it can force the people to cough up.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my