IGP Musa Hassan has to go

Honeymah Dylyani and Joyce Ong, Malaysian Mirror

Twenty-seven opposition MPs at a parliamentary roundtable forum today blamed Inspector-General Musa Hassan for the worsening crime rate in the country and called for his removal as the country’s top cop.

Musa reached his retirement age in 2007 but has continued to serve for another two years, with his extension scheduled to expire in September.

The roundtable participants said Musa was not qualified to seek a further two-year renewal of his tenure of service due to his alleged failure in the past three years to keep crime low, eradicate corruption and protect human rights.

These make up the core police key performance indicators (KPIs) that Musa was expected to achieve but did not.

Four resolutions against Musa

The resolution calling on the government not to renew the term of the IGP was among four resolutions made at the roundtable talks, which was chaired by Permatang Pauh MP and Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

In attendance were 15 MPs from the DAP, 10 from the PKR and two from PAS.

The other resolutions were:

- Calling for the appointment of a new IGP to provide new police leadership to ‘roll back the tide of crime’ in the last five years to ensure a safe Malaysia as well as to present a new image of democratic policing in the country

- Calling on Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to include in his KPI for crime prevention, not just the reduction in street crime by 20% by next year but also all categories of crime as proposed by the Dzaiddin Police Royal Commission in its report in May 2005, and

- Reaffirming the demands for the setting up of an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) as recommended by the Dzaidddin Police Royal Commission, so that public confidence in the police can be restored.

Lim too slams IGP and police

Earlier, Ipoh Timur MP Lim Kit Siang reminded the meeting that when the Dzaiddin Royal Police Commission submitted its report in May 2005, it said Malaysia’s reputation as a safe country was ‘seriously dented’ by the ‘dramatic increase’ in the incidence of crime in the past few years.

“Instead of achieving the Police Royal Commission’s target of reducing the intolerably high incidence of crime of 156,455 cases in 2004 by 20% in 12 months (i.e. 125,164 cases), the reverse took place,” Lim said.

He added that from 2004, when the commission report was tabled to last year, the crime index has increased by 35.5%.

The DAP advisor said that based on the increased crime rate alone, Musa should have resigned and his contract should not have been renewed.