Democracy state or police state?

FEB 17 — Only this morning Datuk Seri Najib Razak insisted that Malaysia
should not apologise for its
democracy, and lamented that
perhaps there was too much
democracy due to personal
snipes against him by opposition
leaders and critics using social
media.
Hours later, came the staggering
revelation that Tun Dr Mahathir
Mohamad had opposed the
Internal Security Act (ISA) and
wanted to scrap it. But the police
held firm and he faltered.
The country’s longest-serving
Inspector-General of Police, Tun
Hanif Omar, backed up Dr
Mahathir ’s claims, saying that he
had also turned down a similar
request from the former prime
minister ’s protege-turned-foe
Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Incredibly, Dr Chandra Muzaffar
said the same, although the
trenchant critic of the security
law noted his support that Dr
Mahathir had nothing to do with
the 1987 ISA crackdown was only
limited to the first 60 days.
“The first 60 days of arrest was a
police operation,” said the
former Universiti Malaya
academic.
In the space of a few hours and
nearly 24 years after Ops Lalang,
we find out that Dr Mahathir
wasn ’t as powerful as we
thought.
That the police could resist his
word on scrapping a law once
reserved for communists but
now used in the name of
national security to detain
anyone — from opposition
figures to counterfeiters, radical
Muslims, Shiites and a nuclear
parts salesman.
So who can we believe now?
That we are a democracy where
elected lawmakers hold sway?
That the executive holds the
power together with the
legislative and the judiciary as is
in any democracy.
Which would stand to reason
why judicial review was removed
from the ISA statutes in 1989
when Dr Mahathir was still prime
minister.
Or do the police hold the reins
of power and tell off the
lawmakers? Would that explain
Tan Sri Musa Hassan being the
last to know that his contract as
IGP would not be extended last
year. If Dr Mahathir, Chandra
and Hanif are right that the
police can even stop laws from
being scrapped, would the
government not listen to Musa
to dictate his own farewell?
The question is: is it convenient
to blame the police for the ISA
remaining in our law books? Or
is this another attempt to rewrite
the country ’s recent history?
And really, are we a democracy
where leaders are openly
criticised or a police state where
even politicians whimper when
the top cop twitches his
moustache or flexes his muscle?
It’s Najib’s word against the
stellar cast of Dr Mahathir,
Chandra and Hanif.