Anwar Ibrahim has been released on police bail this morning.

By Din Merican, Programme Director, PKR

July 17, 2008

Yesterday, the Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi promised that there will not be another “black eye??? trauma for Anwar as happened ten years ago.

However, the police has received a “black eye??? of its own making, in its highly-provocative, unprofessional and unjustifiable arrest of Anwar by police commandos in balaclava at 12.55 pm yesterday – when the former deputy prime minister had already promised to report to the police at 2 pm.

This is the second self-administered police black-eye within a week – the other being the completely unjustified three-day 1,600-personnel police operation to lock down the Federal Capital and the Klang Valley to thwart a massive demonstration in Parliament on Monday when there was not a single protestor – causing great and unnecessary inconvenience and hardships to hundreds of thousands of people, plunging public confidence in the efficiency, competence and professionalism of the police to an all-time low.

The two self-administered “police black-eyes??? in the past week raises the question whether the Royal Police Commission set up in the early months of the Abdullah premiership and which made 125 recommendations to create an efficient, incorruptible, professional world-class police service – with its most important recommendation for an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) – has turned out to be a total waste of time, resources and funds!

COMMENTS:

It is time we make IGP Musa Hassan accountable to the nation for what is suspected to be conduct detrimental to the honour and integrity of the Royal Malaysian Police Force.

For starters, he should be asked to go on extended leave to allow a thorough and unfettered investigation of the evidence fixing report by Anwar Ibrahim. This mattress lugging IGP has plenty to answer for. One would not be far off the mark if one thought the method and style of the party that arrested Anwar Ibrahim near his home carried Musa’s imprimatur.

It was as if they were on the trail of a dangerous misfit whose arrest and arraignment was top priority for the Force. You would not suspect that it was over a report of sodomy; more like arson or murder — the way they were clad in balaclava and toting weaponry suitable for the interdiction of a Botak Chin or a Bentong Kali.

Come on guys, this is Anwar Ibrahim they were after. Unless you are suffering from a severe case of amnesia, this is the former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia, a man widely regarded as one of the Muslim’s world leading public intellectuals, esteemed by political leaders and opinion makers in the West and in the rest of the world and recently listed by Time magazine as the only Malaysian in their ranking of the world’s 100 Most Influential People.

Detained and subjected to questioning at the Kuala Lumpur Police Headquarters, the Police then took him to the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital for a medical examination that required him to strip and have his private parts examined.

Thank God, he had the presence and sternesss of mind to refuse to be photographed in the buff. Had Anwar submitted to the usual Police pressure tactics (that is the Good Cop Bad Cop routine, I mean), there is no guarantee that these photographs would not be manipulated for salacious couplings with Godness knows who–to bolster innuendoes about his sexual perversions.

When it came to extractions for a DNA test, Anwar flatly refused, knowing that he would be subject to the possibility of more diabolical manipulations by the same people who took such obscene delight in lugging a supposedly semen-stained mattress at his previous sodomy trial in 1999. Having been bitten by that traversty of a trial, Anwar is suitably warned.

Of course, his refusal to submit to a DNA sampling now exposes him to the surmise that he has something to hide. But such deductions do not take account of one glaring fact that Anwar has yet to be shown the report of his accusser. There is more than an even chance that the catamite had not made a detailed report of his alleged abuse by Anwar, thereby leaving the Police with enough latitude to construct ‘events’ and create a case for prosecution.

As Anwar said at his press conference today in Bukit Segambut rather emphatically,?“[Can] you imagine – I was asked to stay in the lock-up overnight, spent five-and-a-half hours answering questions and I’ve not seen Saiful’s (Bukhari Azlan) report.??? Talk of phantoms, Saiful’s report has become, with apologies to the late Saddam Hussein, “the Mother of all Phantoms???.